News From Connect Coimbatore
The Information and Technology Secretary, C. Chandramouli, speaking at ‘Connect Coimbatore 2008’ in the city on Friday.Entrepreneurs in Coimbatore should tap the opportunities in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector, C. Chandramouli, secretary (IT), Government of Tamil Nadu, said here on Friday.Inaugurating Connect Coimbatore 2008, an IT conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry, he said the Government had a vision on IT development here.IT park coming up on Avinashi Road was expected to provide direct employment for 30,000
The IT park coming up on Avinashi Road was expected to provide direct employment for 30,000 and indirect employment for almost one lakh people.A six-lane road would come up from Avinashi Road to the park.However, hardcore IT business by local entrepreneurs was yet to take off here on a large scale.The city had the potential to emerge as an ICT manufacturing hub.“We intend to make IT and ICT engines of growth for State economy. We aim at having one fourth of ICT industry here. This can be done only by spreading the ICT industries across the State,” he said.The State Government was providing connectivity to villages and developing applications so that a bundle of services was available in the rural areas and installing internet kiosks.
Opportunities were exploding in rural marketing, banking, etc and “entrepreneurs here should be in the forefront in tapping these,” he said. Legislation was expected to ease procedures for the industries in the State.The Centre had given Rs. 6 crore to establish an IT academy. This would be run by the industries.The academy would identify the gaps in the curriculum, develop the curriculum and also train the faculty.
A portal with lesson plans was also planned. Communication programmes at school level and computer-aided learning in schools were some of the other efforts.C. Umashankar, Managing Director of the Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu, said the corporation was looking out for about 1,000 acres here to develop the IT sector further. “Coimbatore is the place with the best investment climate, next to Chennai, in the State,” he said. The Tidel Park coming up here would have 1.7 million sq.ft of built up area and would be commissioned by December 2008.
Next to Coimbatore, the Corporation was developing IT parks in Madurai and Tirunelveli too.Besides, the corporation would supply desktops and laptops at nominal prices this year. This would help bring down the digital divide.A 300-seater training centre was coming up on the ELCOT premises in Chennai and this would be used partly for the finishing school planned by the Government.IT training centres were coming up in the districts to train the officials. Further, software testing was on and initially ELCOT would bring in 108 registration offices for online property registration.
