Silicon Valley investors to visit Odisha

Will explore the investment opportunities in the IT/ITes and ESDM sector

A four member team of global IT (information technology) investors from Silicon Valley is scheduled to visit the state on Thursday to explore the investment opportunities in the IT/ITes (enabled services) and ESDM (electronic system design and manufacturing) sector.

The team is likely to meet the Chief minister Naveen Patnaik, Chief secretary Jugal Kishore Mohapatra, state IT minister, Pranab Prakash Das during their day long stay in the state.

Their visit follows the signing of a pact between the state government and TiE Silicon Valley in May with an objective to develop the state as an IT hub and attract US investments.

Sources said, the visiting investors will go to Infocity, the IT SEZ located at the out skirts of the city, where the IT giants Infosys, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services are having operational units. They may also visit Info-valley, the second IT hub in the city being developed by the IT department through Odisha Infrastructure Development Corporation (Idco) in 600 acres of land.The investors' team comprises of Ajit Manocha, Prakash Aggarwal, Arif Maskatia and Sanjeev Shriya.

The Odisha government is making strides to transform the state into a premier ESDM hub. It has recently finalized a Strategic Roadmap for Development of ESDM Sector in the state and initiated steps for establishment of characterization lab for reliability testing of chips.

The ESDM sector is poised to generate a cumulative revenue of Rs 18,800 crore in the state by 2024, as per an estimate. Rayagada, Sundergarh, Balasore and Ganjam districts have been identified as potential growth centres for the ESDM sector after a SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunities and threat) analysis.

Presently, the focus is mainly on Khurda district where the proposed Info-valley is coming up.The state government has also finalized a robust ICT Policy-2014, replacing the previous one in force since 2004. The new policy aims to achieve a gross ICT Turnover (including exports of software and IT Services, ESDM, domestic consumption and training) of USD 4 billion (Rs 24, 000 Crores) by 2020.

Software exports from Odisha touched Rs 2,400 crore in 2013-14, an increase of 23.4 per cent over the previous fiscal. IT units in the state had exported Rs 1,945 crore worth of software in 2012-13, out of which STPI registered units contributed Rs 1,705 crore.

Recently, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY) under the Union ministry of Communications and Information Technology has accorded in-principle approval for setting up of an Electronics Manufacturing Cluster (EMC) under the EMCs scheme at Info-valley. A grant of Rs 96.96 crore has been approved by DEITY for development of EMC cluster on 215.76 acres of land.