Kota Pune yang jaraknya 183 km dar Bombay, bukan saja
salah satu pusat IT seperti ditulis di artikel dibawah
ini, tapi juga kota pendidikan. Disini belajar 8
orang mahasiswa Indonesia, diantaranya seorang
mahasiswa riset fisika untuk mengambil S-3 dan seorang
mahasiswa jurusan IT yang mengambil S-2.
Dekat kampus Cognizant, Wipro dan Infosys, berdiri
dengan megahnya International Institute for IT
disingkat I2IT. Sekolah ini didirikan oleh
Krisnamurthy, pemilik Finolex, Vijay Batra, bapak
super computer India. Guru-gurunya berdedikasi, metode
pengajarannya modern, mahassiswa yang semuanya tinggal
di hostel dalam lingkungan kampus, tiap orangnya
dilengkapi dengan komputer di kamar yang saling
connected, bisa mereview kuliah, mengerjakan
assignment dan membikin proyek dari komputernya.
Mahasiswa asingnya dari Korea, dua tahun lalu 150
orang, sayangnya belum ada seorangpun mahasiswa asal
Indonesia disini. Padahal syarat mahasiswa asing
tidak seberat mahasiswa India sendiri.
Selain Pune University yang adalah salah satu sekolah
terbaik di India, di Pune bertebaran 30 technological
colleges dan management institutes. Universitas dan
industri saling dukung mendukung disini. Mahasiswa
teknik dan management bisa kerja praktek di software
companies di IT park atau diluarnya seperti LG (Korea)
dan Bajaj dan masih banyak lagi. Mahasiswa pertanian
dan science juga bisa kerja praktek di Sugar Institute
yang sudah menghasilkan 4 varietas tebu unggul
(rendemen gula tinggi, tahan hama, tahan kekeringan)
hasil dari GMO atau molecular biology.
Pemerintah kota Pune tidak sembarangan menjadi
hubungan sister cities, cuma menjalin hubungan yang
ada manfaatnya saja. Yaitu dengan kota San Jose
dimana ada Silicon Valley, dan dengan kota Kawasaki di
Jepang yang penting bagi Bajaj.
Salam,
RM
(Business Standard)
Pune's tech edge
Nandini Lakshman / Mumbai October 23, 2004
After missing the IT boom of the '90s, the city is
trying to make up for lost time.
It must be a sign of the times hanging on a modest,
single-storied house 12 km from Pune. “Rooms vacant,”
says the handwritten board pinned to the gate, “Only
IT and BPO professionals need apply.
That signboard in a rural hamlet might have seemed
bizarre a few years ago. Not any longer. This is
Hinjewadi, off the Mumbai Pune Expressway, and one of
the hottest information technology (IT) destinations
mushrooming in Maharashtra.
It boasts an IT park, where the rural and contemporary
reside side by side. With a population of barely 1,500
people, the village, surrounded by hills and paddy
fields still has a rural feel with buffaloes ambling
about aimlessly against the backdrop of a furiously
pumping tubewell.
But Hinjewadi is moving into the 21st century at high
speed. The once ramshackle homes which are now
doubling up as eateries are getting a fresh coat of
paint. And builders have moved in to woo the big buck
IT professionals who are taking over the village.
Huge hoardings offer homes with everything from
jacuzzis to landscaped gardens. “If you are working at
IT park, you shouldn’t be living anywhere else,”
screams one hoarding.
Hinjewadi’s around 500-acre Rajeev Gandhi Technology
Park is already home to scores of IT, IT-enabled
services (ITES) and business process outsourcing (BPO)
units. And hordes of others are on the way. From new
companies to existing ones which are expanding, they
are all heading to Pune and its outskirts.
Tata Technologies, KPIT Systems, Cognizant and
Geometrix Solutions have already set up base here. And
the country’s two best-known IT heavyweights — Infosys
and Wipro — have sprawling campuses.
And many more are jostling for space in the park
developed by the state investment agency Maharashtra
Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC).
Also, MIDC is currently holding talks with
international names like Deloitte Consulting, Dell
Computers and Hewlett Packard which want to set up
back-office operations in the area. Already, 107
companies have registered for land during the last
fiscal compared to only 50 two years ago.
Hinjewadi isn’t the only place exerting a magnet-like
charm on the IT industry. There are 18 IT parks slated
to come up at distances of anywhere between 8km to
20km from Pune and others are also in the pipeline.
There will soon be IT parks in once-sleepy villages
like Talawde and Kharadi.
If all goes well, even the industrial belt of Talegaon
is being considered for an IT hub. According to the
Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) data, the
private sector alone is building 15 IT parks.
“After Bangalore, we are the most preferred
destination for IT companies,” says V Kanade, chief
executive officer, MIDC. In the last two years, he
says that land inquiries have gone up from just one a
week to at least two daily.
So a host of midsized private builders like Kolte,
Embassy, Panchsheel and Kumar have also jumped into
the fray. Just 3.5 km away from the Pune race course,
farmer-turned-builder Satish Magar is promoting his
private Magarpatta city.
Magarpatta is a 400-acre township with almost 92 acres
are being developed as a cybercity. The rest will be
used for residential complexes, shools, hospitals and
other support services.
The companies that have moved in here include the
global leader in communication systems applications &
services Avaya, BPO company EXL, British insurance
major Aviva, multinational software solution provider
Amdocs and global services company Cymbal.
Says the head of a leading ITES company headquartered
in Banglaore which has opened office at Kharadi: “Give
Pune two more years, and it will overtake Bangalore.”
That may be an overstatement. But the figures show
that Maharashtra is turning into a destination to be
reckoned with. According to figures provided by
Nasscom, the country’s apex body for the software
industry, the state has 1,191 IT-related units.
Also, Maharashtra’s software exports touched over Rs
8,500 crore in the year ending March 2004. This was a
54.65 per cent increase, the largest for any state,
over the previous year.
Karnataka, of course, still leads the pack with
exports of Rs 18,100 and growth of over 45 per cent
last year. Some industry experts predict that
Maharashtra will catch up in the coming years.
At the same time, it isn’t that Maharashtra is the
only aggressive state. Others like Tamilnadu and
Andhra Pradesh are snapping at its heels. Even Kolkata
is sprucing up to be an IT destination. During the
last fiscal, the two southern states notched up
exports of Rs 7,404 crore and Rs 5,025 crore
respectively.
MIDC’s joint CEO, Bhushan Gagrani insists that the
figures don’t tell the whole story and that
Maharashtra’s contribution to the IT industry could be
bigger.
“ Often, companies are registered elsewhere and their
Maharashtra revenues are clubbed with the consolidated
figure they present. You don’t expect Wipro and
Infosys to say how much they make from here,” he says.
The top IT players claim that Pune, despite its late
start, has the edge. Says Houston University alumnus
Ashish Shah, head of Pune-based software testing
outfit, SNS Technology which is expanding at
Hinjewadi: “Pune has a lot more benefits. It scores on
many fronts.”
Why? For one, Bangalore is virtually saturated.
Hyderabad appears to have lost its edge after
Chandrababu Naidu’s government in Andhra Pradesh was
toppled in the last polls.
Chennai has a headstart but isn’t selling itself as
aggressively as the others. And Kolkata is just taking
off and is still vulnerable to labour problems. “All
these issues place Pune in an advantageous position,”
says Gagrani.
That’s why, having missed the bus during the IT boom
of the ‘90s, it’s in a hurry to make up for lost time
now. “The trigger is largely competition and we want
to leverage the host of advantages that are in our
favour,” he adds.
So what makes Pune’s suburbs so attractive to IT
players? Attractive infrastructure, say companies.
Good roads apart, it is the proximity to Pune city,
which is a 25-minute to an hour’s drive away. Also,
Mumbai with its international airport is only a
three-and-a-half hour’s drive away by the expressway.
The Government, in its bid to woo the hi-tech
industries also threw in liberal incentives in its IT
and ITES Policy, 2003. The main issue was land, so it
waived stamp duties for owned and leased properties
built on MIDC land.
For the private builders, until 2002, there was a 50
per cent exemption on stamp duty. With the new policy,
a further 25 per cent has been waived. Then
electricity and octroi duties have been exempted and
sales tax reduced on on locally procured capital
goods.
Says Priti Rao, the Infosys head in Pune: “The
Maharashtra government has been extremely co-operative
and progressive in its IT initiatives. This has been
an important factor in the growth of Infosys’
operations here.”
Infosys has two campuses in Pune. The first 25 acres
has a capacity of 3,000 seats. Another campus is
coming up on 112 acres with a planned investment of
around Rs 250 crore over the next couple of years.
One good thing in Maharashtra’s favour is that MIDC
has also changed with the times. Since it started in
1962, MIDC bought land from farmers, developed it and
then sold it to companies without involving any middle
agency. “We were not in land dealing, but
development,” says Gagrani.
Now, for the past four months, as part of its new
found aggression, MIDC has been wooing private
builders to develop its land. Why the change in
strategy? It has realised, that every IT player does
not aspire to be an Infosys or Wipro, at least to
begin with.
The small and medium enterprises (SMEs) don’t want
sprawling campuses and they don’t want to lock away
funds unnecessarily. “They want small offices ranging
from 3,000 sq ft to 25,000 sq ft to seat 60 to 100
people,” says Gagrani.
And with no built up offices with MIDC, they often
moved to other states. Today, with practically every
state wooing IT companies, that was something
Maharashtra could do without.
Also, MIDC has realised the power of the SMEs. In
1992, it built the sprawling Millennium Business Park
off Mumbai, at Mahape on the Thane-Belapur road. More
than a decade later, 25 per cent of the land still
remains vacant. “Since we didn’t want to lock up our
funds in built up area, we were not able to service
the SMEs,” says Gagrani.
That’s when it tied up with builders to develop its
land. Of course, it laid down criteria so that it only
dealt with experienced builders. They should have
developed a minimum 200,000 sq ft of built up IT area.
This is like killing two birds with one stone. Says
Anil Kawade, regional officer at MIDC’s office in
Pune,
“Since they are developing our land, they also want to
market it aggressively. That way it enhances our
marketing strength and we become like a one-stop
shop.” Adds Magar, “Multinationals need customised
buildings which is not possible for MIDC to provide.”
Moreover, being in Pune gives companies a competitive
environment without the hassles of big city life. And
don’t forget that 32 per cent of India’s software
professionals are from Mumbai and Pune.
Also, Maharashtra accounts for 35 per cent of personal
computer penetration and 32 per cent of Internet
subscribers, its two main cities churn out trained
technical personnel in droves. More than 169,000
people are added to the skilled manpower pool every
year.
Says Jayashree Joglekar, chief operating officer of
Wipro Technologies’ Securities group, “Pune has many
educational institutions which provide good quality
skill sets.”
With a headcount of 4,500, this is the eighth location
for Wipro which also includes its BPO outfit — Wipro
Spectramind. With two buildings already up and running
on its 25 acres, three more structures are coming up
in the next six months.
But many others are putting big bets on Pune. For
instance, when the Rs 125 crore manufacturing and
banking software company KPIT acquired Cummins
Information Technology, it had six offices in
different parts of Pune and it also opened an outpost
in Bangalore.
Today, with business growing, it has invested in 10
acres at Hinjewadi. It plans to increase its 1,250
headcount to 1,500 by this year end. Says Ravi Pandit,
chairman KPIT, “It will cut our costs by 10 per cent.
Productivity will increase and it will be easier for
our clients to come up as often as possible.” Over the
next two-three years, when its third phase of
construction ends, KPIT will have a 450,000 sq ft
office in Hinjewadi.
Inevitably, rapid growth is taking its toll in Pune.
Until two years ago employees seldom left a job and
attrition rates were near zero. Now, they are on the
rise.
“Competition has eroded some level of commitment from
the employee side,” says Rajendra Dave, COO & country
manager of Network Security Solutions (India) Ltd.
Even so, they are nowhere near the 40 per cent
attrition rates in Mumbai’s BPO market.
Also, the IT boom has pushed up land costs. Two years
ago, land prices in Hinjewadi were Rs 1 lakh an acre.
Today, it’s closer to Rs 5 lakh for an acre. At
Kharadi which is within the Pune Corporation limits,
prices are up from Rs 7 lakh to Rs 10 lakh an acre
while it is currently Rs 3 lakh at Talawde, up from Rs
1 lakh an acre two years ago.
Then, there’s the issue of domestic connectivity. The
military-owned Pune airport is small. So, there aren’t
enough flights to different places.
Now, the government has put in a proposal to build an
airport at Chakan, 15 km from Pune on 1,000 hectares
of land. The civil aviation ministry has given an in
principle clearance but the final formalities are
being worked out.
This is not stopping IT companies from flocking to
Pune. As Magar says: “We would like to expand to other
places, but Pune is where the market is now.”
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
$9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/BRUplB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
***************************************************************************
Berdikusi dg Santun & Elegan, dg Semangat Persahabatan. Menuju Indonesia yg Lebih
Baik, in Commonality & Shared Destiny. www.ppi-india.uni.cc
***************************************************************************
__________________________________________________________________________
Mohon Perhatian:
1. Harap tdk. memposting/reply yg menyinggung SARA (kecuali sbg otokritik)
2. Pesan yg akan direply harap dihapus, kecuali yg akan dikomentari.
3. Lihat arsip sebelumnya, www.ppi-india.da.ru;
4. Posting: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
5. Satu email perhari: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
6. No-email/web only: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
7. kembali menerima email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
