Infosys hopes to start work on Mohali IT SEZ by Oct

IT major Infosys hopes to start construction work on the Rs 425-crore SEZ campus here, which would create jobs for about 5,000 people, by October this year.
Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal today laid the foundation stone of the campus here in the presence of Infosys Executive Chairman N R Narayana Murthy.
To be spread over 50 acres of land, Infosys will set up the campus at Mohali with built up area of 6.5 lakh square feet in first phase and it will create jobs for 5,000 people.
"We will create seating capacity of 5,000 people in the first phase (at Mohali campus)," Murthy told reporters here today.

The Infosys chairman said that the company would build the Mohali campus within next 36 months.
"We will take six months to get all approvals from both Centre and state governments. I know the state government will act swiftly, but given the conditions like elections in country may be in April and May I do believe that approval of SEZ will take 3 to 4 months. Therefore our desire to start construction in the month of October this year ... We will build in 36 months," he said.

Infosys is already having a campus at Chandigarh at an area of 30 acres of land with seating capacity of 6,000 employees and it has software exports of Rs 1,500 crore in last fiscal from this centre.

Describing the setting up of Infosys campus in Mohali as a "big day" for Punjab, Punjab Deputy CM Sukhbir Singh Badal said this campus would give an economic boost to the state.
"It is a big day for Punjab for having Infosys here. It was always my dream to make Punjab an IT hub because I feel IT sector is one sector which creates maximum jobs with enough disposable income," he said.
"Not in more than 100 days (since Sukhbir met Murthy in Bangalore last year), we are here setting up the campus. Infosys will have big impact on economic scenario of state be it hotel, real estate sectors.. (with it) overall economic conditions will get boost," he said.

Punjab government has been trying very hard to bring a big IT company to the state as an anchor company in order to provide impetus to IT sector in the state. It has also set up an IT city in Mohali at an area of 1600 acres of land.
Asked about new IT campuses of Infosys coming up, Murthy said that the company would start new centres at Indore and Noida.
"We will also be starting a centre in Noida because we do have a lot of our employees coming from northern part of the country and so many of them have expressed their desire to be nearer their parents, nears their home towns. So we said we always believe as a company that keeping our employees as happy as they can. Therefore, we decided to expand.

"We will have a campus in Noida, we have one in Gurgaon, we have one in Jaipur and we will be starting a new campus in Indore. We laid the foundation stone in Nagpur. So these are parts of our future expansion," he said.