Govt nod to delay expansion of Infy's 2nd Bengaluru campus

As company awaits govt approvals for proposed campus in Sarjapur, it expands in Electronics City to support growth

Infosys Technologies’ plan for a second campus in this city is expected to see further delay. It awaits several clearances by the state government to develop the 350-odd acres it had bought long before in the open market, at the Sarjapur area here.

With no sign of the approvals coming any time soon, Infosys is developing three more projects in and around its main campus at Electronics City, in the suburbs. A committee of the state government recently approved these, aimed to create space for another 18,000-20,000 staffers when completed.

“In Sarjapur, there are lots of things the government has to do, for which we are waiting. There are some land-related issues which the revenue department has to address and they have now promised to do so. We also need proper road connectivity and water, which they'll hopefully solve,” U Ramdas Kamath, executive vice-president & head of infrastructure facilities at the company, told Business Standard.

Adding: “If you look at Bengaluru today and the main IT (information technology) corridors, most of these are plagued by issues like traffic, road connectivity, etc. We want to take up these (Electronics City) projects because this is well-connected. Besides, we have a self-governing mechanism here, since this is an industrial township under the Karnataka Municipal Act. We maintain the whole township, collect our own taxes, we do our own sanction of building plans, like a municipality.”

At present, Infosys has seating capacity for around 35,000 people across its facilities in Electronics City, including the main campus.

Its second campus in Pune is actually the largest for the company in head count. Across 129 acres, that campus employs around 32,000 people.

Last year, Infosys had backed out from earlier plans to develop a campus at the Devanahalli IT Park near the international airport here, citing lack of basic infrastructure such as road connectivity and water.

Its plan to build a large campus in West Bengal is also stuck, in the absence of the state government's willingness to accord Special Economic Zone (SEZ) status to the proposed development centre, at Rajarhat, close to Kolkata. In the absence of a clear signal from the government there, Infosys is mulling an expansion in neighbouring Odisha. It already employs around 4,000 people in Bhubaneswar and is in the process of setting up a campus in the city, for which it was given around 50 acres.

“The government is quite cooperative (in Odisha) and the bureaucracy is good. We are setting up an SEZ there, with 5,000 seats in the phase-I. We have started the construction but it will take time,” added Kamath.