Now an IT village in Visakhapatnam!

In an endeavour to bring major IT companies to Visakhapatnam, the Andhra Pradesh government is planning to set up an integrated information technology village in Visakhapatnam.

The IT village, to be modelled on the lines of Silicon Valley, will come up in an area of about 1,000 acres on the outskirts of Visakhapatnam.

Officials of the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation and the state industrial department recently visited places like Mudasarlova, Rushikonda and Madurawada to identify a suitable land for the purpose.

"APIIC will create all infrastructural facilities like roads, buildings and housing complex besides allotting land to IT companies as per their requirements. Apart from this, the government is also planning to develop recreation facilities at the proposed IT village," an APIIC official told Business Standard.

Recently, the government allotted prime land of about 22 acres in the heart of the city to IT majors -- Satyam Computer Services Limited, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services -- to set up software units in Visakhapatnam.

These three companies are likely to start their operations within a couple of years. HSBC has already started its BPO and its call centre operations here and has more than 1,200 software engineers.

In addition to this, APIIC has earmarked about 11 acres of land near Ramakrishna beach to construct IT towers. For this, it has already called expressions of interest to select the developer. More than 40-50 software companies would be accommodated at the proposed IT towers.

The software exports from Vizag city too have been on the rise. During 2004-05, software exports crossed Rs 50 crore (Rs 500 million).

"There are about 50 small and medium enterprise software units in the city, of which about 10 SME software units started operations during the last fiscal," B Prabhakar, president of Visakhapatnam Information Technology Association, said, adding, "While the exports from these SME software units touched Rs 35 crore in 2003-04, it crossed Rs 50 crore (including Visakhapatnam Special Economic Zone units) in 2004-05. In the current year, it is expected to cross more than Rs 70 crore (Rs 700 million)."