Deputy Commissioner SAS Nagar Girish Dayalan today expressed hope that with the Progressive Punjab Investors Summit, which is being organized on 5th and 6th of December at Indian School of Business (ISB), Mohali, will prove the icing on the cake. After taking stock of the arrangements in a meeting with officials, he said that Mohali, which is rapidly developing into the Next Big IT Hub has ready to move plug and play work spaces available at STPI, Quark city, Bestech Towers etc. and has presence of Quark, Bestech among other IT Parks.Mr. Dayalan said that STPI, Mohali is housing the Punjab start up hub with exports of Rs.4400 crore and having 150+ companies registered is providing employment to more than 35000 professionals. He said that the Department of IT in partnership with STPI is coming up with another STPI incubation center at Amritsar, which is under construction on around 3 acres with an estimated cost of over Rs.20 crores.He apprised that to attract IT Industry and development of IT parks, Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh led state government, through GMADA, is offering plots in IT City at Mohali, which is having state of the art facilities with integrated world class infrastructure. IT City is very strategically located in close proximity to the International Airport, Mohali and near to all the common visiting places in the tri-city. This meticulously planned city has been showered with attention from leading corporate houses and prominent national builders. Presence of leading institutes of India in SAS Nagar Mohali like Indian School of Business, National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER), National Agri Food Biotechnology Institute (NABI) is helping Mohali develop into a modern Innovation/Technical Hub of Punjab.
The Deputy Commissioner told that as per the data, with aggressive policy advocacy and proactive follow up with the investors, investment in IT/ITeS sector have risen substantially during the financial year 2018-19 and has touched Rs.369 crores with an increase of over 200 per cent as compared to previous financial year 2017-18. He said that this is expected to generate employment of approximately 7200 IT professionals. Some of the major companies who have invested during this financial year 2018-19 are CRM, Meritech, Kindlebit Solutions, Netsmartz, Click Labs, Bajaj Electronics among many others.During the previous financial year 2017-18, the IT sector investment was only Rs.121.49 cores, and some of the major IT companies who invested were Smart Data, Drish Infotech, Outline Systems etc. whereas in the FY 2016-17, investment was to the tune of Rs. 252.93 crores with the major contribution from companies like Nath Outsourcing, Cognesol, One Business, HDFC etc. After setting up of operations in the IT city by Infosys Ltd., (who are now going in for Phase-II expansion) in the year 2015-16, more and more IT companies have started setting up their operations in the IT City. He said that state has a strong IT/ITeS/Electronic manufacturing conducive ecosystem with presence of 150+ registered IT units in various fields like software development, cloud computing, website development, business intelligence, fab manufacturing, telecom equipment, electronic testing labs, state of the art SMT manufacturing lines etc. With 24 hours shifts allowed for men and women and no lockouts/strikes in past decade, Punjab is fast emerging an ideal destination to set up IT/ITeS operations in Punjab.
He said that ‘Building Partnerships for Inclusive Growth - MSMEs in the Global Value Chain’ theme based Punjab Progressive Investors Summit, will see participation from the MSMEs of Punjab, apart from leading industrialists, new-age entrepreneurs, foreign missions and other dignitaries. The Summit will be the ideal platform to experience the success story of Punjab and explore the numerous investment opportunities offered by the State. He said that satate government has achieved a milestone of implementation of investment of over Rs.50,000 crore within 2.5 years of taking the reins of the State. This remarkable achievement has been supported by a robust industrial and business development policy, supportive government infrastructure and transformative ease of doing business reforms.He added that the state government is developing special parks for hi-tech industry with special emphasis on Mobility sector, Electric Vehicles, Engineering Goods at Ludhiana and Mohali. The One Stop Office – Invest Punjab ensures seamless and smooth investment in the State by facilitating all regulatory approvals under one roof. The bureau now offers online Invest Punjab Business First portal with 66 regulatory services of 12 departments, 34 fiscal incentives, End to End Online Processing, Real Time Investment Tracker, and Dedicated Relationship Manager. Recently the Invest Punjab model has been extended to district level, to facilitate MSME units.