Hardware Park hogs limelight

News From Cyberabad

At last the Andhra Pradesh government's efforts to bring in electronic hardware units into the state seem to be fructifying with more than half-a-dozen hardware majors evincing interest in setting up their plants at the Electronic Hardware Park being developed at Mamidipally near the city.

State government sources said that a few hardware manufacturers including the largest manufacturer of personal computers in the country, and a leading computer monitors' manufacturer were currently carrying out feasibility studies.

After the state government conceived the hardware park and formulated the hardware policy in August 2001, Videocon Electronics is the only unit to have set up its consumer appliances manufacturing facility at the park.

"We have already invested about Rs 100 crore on setting up the facility here, and plans are afoot to expand the facility further in the next few months," Madhusudhan Jhunjhunwala, the head of Videocon operations, here told Business Standard. The plant presently employs about 350 people including skilled and semi-skilled personnel.

The government plans to develop the park in an area of about 5,000 acres adjacent to the proposed international airport. It has already acquired 1,100 acres of land, out of which 150 acres have been developed with all the facilities as a pilot project. This is where Videocon's unit is located. The government intends to eventually develop the park as a special economic zone (SEZ).

"With Silvassa and Pondicherry (considered to be tax havens by manufacturers), losing their charm fast, the hardware park which is being developed in combination with the international airport and SEZ is attracting a lot of players," Col. M Vijay Kumar, the director of Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), Hyderabad, commented on why the park has been catching up action after a long while. Watch these columns for frequent updates on the park.

DIOs in demand
The state government's decision to recruit District Information Officers (DIOs) met with success with different government departments flooding the Information Technology & Communication department with requests for deputing these officers to their departments.

Initially, the government proposed to recruit these officers at the district level and department level for overseeing the information technology related needs at these places, as part of its e-governance initiative.

"We have recruited 150 DIOs a couple of months back and sent them to districts and departments. Now there is demand from departments like APTransco and panchayat raj for these officers as they find them very useful. So we are again on a recruitment spree," M N Rao, the deputy director (IT&C) of the state government, said. The government this time plans to take at least 55 people, 25 of them by January 2004 and the rest after some time.

At a time when the government has stopped filling the vacant positions in different departments, IT seems to be the only segment which is exempt from the stipulation. Job aspirants are quick to grab the opportunity with the government already receiving over 9,000 applications much before the closing date for receiving the applications on December 3.

Four Soft IPO early next year
After a gap of many months, there comes an IPO from a city-based company. Four Soft, which had announced in April this year that it was planning an IPO, filed its offer document with Sebi last week. The company has fixed Rs 20 premium on a face value of Rs 5.

The company has lined up a Rs 34-crore expansion project, for which it plans to raise Rs 19.875 crore via IPO. It had earlier raised Rs 8 crore in the pre-IPO round from UTI Venture Fund and APIDC. The rest of the funds will come from the internal acrruals. The IPO is expected to open in January/February next year.