L & T To Set Up Intelligent City In Baroda

Larsen & Toubro, the Rs 5,677 crore engineering and construction giant, plans to set up an `intelligent city' on the outskirts of Baroda at a cost of Rs 500 crore.

The `city' will act as a nerve centre for future engineering, technology and EPC activities of the company. It will also function as a design centre catering to the requirements of other L&T centres like Hazira and Powai.

L&T sources say ``Baroda is one of the company's biggest projects. It will be the seat of intelligence and will draw expertise from the manufacturing facilities at Hazira and Powai in Mumbai.''

L&T is preparing its three arms - engineering, technology and EPC - to take on additional business volume of over Rs 4,000 crore by the year 2000. The engineering and technology hub will draw mechanical, chemical and electrical engineers from all over the L&T world. It will also generate enough software technology as well as engineers for the company.

Financing for the entire complex will be raised internally. Every year, the company plans to pump in Rs 75 crore into the project. The intelligent city will house offices for petrochemicals & chemicals, fertilisers, oil & gas andsteel plants, refineries and infrastructure projects. In fact, there will be 10 modules representing each division. The development will begin in 1999.

At present, L&T has six offices in Baroda, of which 5 are on rentals while an office complex is owned by the company. The gameplan will now be to shift five offices from Baroda to this campus while holding on to the office complex in the city, sources add.

The campus will also house a project management institute. Also, the EPC group's engineering programme academy (EPA) which will be incorporated into the institute by the year 2002.

The hub will also have L&T residential complex and a shopping arcade spread over 150 acres while services and utilities like school, hospital and sport complex will be stretched over 30 acres. In phase I, the company plans to build over two lakh sq ft of land.

This campus will be soley used for L&Ts activities unlike the Infocity at Hyderabad to sell or lease out space to infotech companies. L&T is developing 158 acres at Madapur in Hyderabad at a cost of Rs 1,500 crore as a cybercentre.

L&T is now concentrating on four areas of core competence : engineering and construction, cement, electricals and construction equipment. With the proposed intelligent city, sources claim that the company expects to be get a big leap in its core activities which will see L&T's turnover crossing Rs 10,000 crore by the end of this century.