The city should leverage its strengths as a Tier II Information Technology (IT) destination and create an alternative approach to attract more units, says S. Gopalakrishnan, chairman of CII southern region and CEO and MD of Infosys Technologies.
Addressing a press conference here on Friday, he said with a number of public sector units, defence establishments and marine activity that have their own IT requirements, Visakhapatnam could grow. Besides, significant interest in power, huge data centres and applications on cloud could also help Visakhapatnam grow. “There is leadership in Vizag and people who want to make it happen here,” he added.
He said small companies would have the opportunity to behave like big companies because once they put the application on cloud anybody could access it.
He felt the city with a large number of engineering colleges could take the lead and develop entrepreneurship because any city would grow around entrepreneurs. The colleges themselves could be incubators for entrepreneurship.
Advantages
Replying to queries, he said Tier II cities have advantages and handicaps. It's difficult to attract manpower because young people generally like to work in big cities. Also it was easy to switch jobs in a big city. While pollution and quality of life were a concern in Tier I cities, the quality was much better in Tier II cities. On the other hand, growth rate was slower in Tier II and III cities.
Mr. Gopalakrishnan said Infosys was not considering opening of any development centres right now as it was concentrating on consolidation and growth. Considerable focus was also on the second campus at Hyderabad.
On China, he said it would be a competitor but the IT sector was not afraid of competition. “From the beginning we are taking advantage of China and the Infosys centre in that country has 2,800 people working in it,” he said.
CII Vizag zonal council vice-chairman R.V.S. Raju said CII was planning to organise a roadshow to showcase Vizag. A vision document by involving all stakeholders, including industry, colleges and government agencies, would be prepared and presented to the District Collector. CII (AP) Chairman Sakthi Sagar and others were present.
Published - October 23, 2010 12:03 pm IST
