TIDEL Park Coimbatore, the Tamil Nadu government-owned IT special economic zone launched about three years ago, has come calling on Bangalore’s IT industries to invest in its idling space.
The 17-lakh-sq ft flagship IT facility of Coimbatore was built for IT and IT-enabled services companies at Rs. 407 crore and began functioning in May 2011. But it is only around 60 per cent full, senior officials of Tamil Nadu’s IT Department said on Friday.
Promoter agency, TIDEL Park Ltd. (derived from the names of Tamil Nadu government agencies, Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation-TIDCO and Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu-ELCOT), is now wooing Indian and multinational IT companies in other States to spread into Tamil Nadu’s tier-2 industrial hub, Tamil Nadu IT Secretary T.K. Ramachandran told a news conference here.
It has Wipro and Bosch but lacks mid-sized growth-driver companies, he said.
Starting with this roadshow, TIDEL would take it to Hyderabad and Pune.
Later, Mr. Ramachandran, and Director and CEO of Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency Atul Anand and Managing Director of TIDEL Park Ltd. P. Shanmugasundaram, showcased the park to executives of around 60 IT companies, along with a team of Tamil Nadu officials.
The 10-acre SEZ, built to seat 12,000 professionals, now hosts 16 companies and 3,500 professionals.
TIDEL Park Coimbatore offers incentives for long-term and large-space tenants at Rs. 23-Rs.25 per sq ft a month — which is well below the Rs. 44 its Chennai sibling charges, or Bangalore’s IT rentals of Rs. 40-Rs. 60.
Coimbatore is known for its pleasant weather and good connectivity by air, rail and road. Although the IT park is 25 per cent bigger, better than the older and more successful Chennai venture and its rental is half that of the Chennai park, Mr. Shanmugasundaran said that marketing a tier-2 city was the challenge rather than selling the IT park itself.
“We are struggling to push Coimbatore,” although living costs and attrition rates would be lower there than in a bigger city, he said.
