IT in UP needs to move beyond Noida, says Nasscom

Despite inherent natural advantages, investment in IT still eludes UP (besides NCR).

“Mostly the state seems to showcase its perception over the years,” Ganesh Natarajan, chairman, Nasscom and deputy chairman and managing director, Zensar, told Business Standard.

The scenario of political unrest, changing state governments, lack of implementation of policies, law and order situation, etc seem to work against the interests of the investors in general.

“There is this urgent need to bridge the gap between policy making and its implementation at the earliest. The actual execution must go down to the ground level,” reiterate Som Mittal, president, Nasscom.

“Especially with regard to the IT companies, they seem to operate on different lines altogether. They cannot be bracketed with other industries and made to skip around the government departments,” informed a senior official of an IT company.

Elaborating on UP, Natarajan further said that the state has many ‘positives’ to its credit like existence of basic infrastructure, education and other facilities, what is needed is to ‘market’ these credits nationally and internationally to bring in company investments.

“If IIT Kanpur can maintain itself and be the best seat of IT education in UP for students worldwide, then why other industries can not sustain here,” questioned Pawan Kumar, Chief Executive Officer, Sahara Next.

According to Kumar, in UP the intentions of policy makers are good, policies are good but the only problem that exits is that they are not implemented.

“There is a need to enlarge UP’s presence besides Noida,” added Mittal.

Experts believe that Lucknow is the best option in UP besides the NCR which may be developed as an IT destination.

The ‘tehzeeb’ of Lucknow may be termed as the practical form of customer service. The inherent warmth in speech that the natives of the city have is the most important aspect required to deal with customers worldwide.

It is this tehzeeb which can be formulated to have the best people in customer services.

In order to make Lucknow and other cities as the destination next for IT companies, experts believe that the foremost step is to execute the IT Policy the state had introduced in 2004 and put in place a ‘focus cell’ to redress the grievances of IT companies. Once this is done, the state could work upon marketing its strengths across the country and at international forums.

“Speaking and focusing about what the state has to offer at various occasions like national and international seminars etc will help deter the misconception and the wrong perception that UP has outside,” Mittal said.