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Nasscom gives Chennai a verbal IT boost

CHENNAI - With better infrastructure and quality human talent, Chennai fares better than Bangalore in attracting new investments from business process outsourcing (BPO) and software firms, the president of IT industry body Nasscom, Kiran Karnik, said Thursday.

"Bangalore is overheated. The infrastructure there has not kept the pace of the growth in the IT [information technology] sector," Karnik said, after inaugurating the new facility of BPO firm 24/7 Customer in Chennai.

"The value proposition of Chennai is good," he said, adding Chennai was poised to become a major hub for BPO firms.

Karnik said Bangalore's infrastructure was facing severe constraints and Chennai could take advantage of this.

"Chennai continues to have a narrower gap between infrastructure requirement and supply," he said.

Karnik, however, asked the state government to make sure that Chennai does not face constraints in the future as more and more companies set up their development centers and back offices in the city.

Vivek Harinarain, IT secretary of Tamil Nadu, said the government was able to increase the space requirements for IT firms by many fold in the last couple of years to attract companies.

"We were able to change the perception about Chennai [that it was not an IT-friendly destination]," Harinarain said.

P V Kannan, founder and chief executive officer of 24/7 Customer, said the company held a CAT (common admission test) model test for prospective employees and it was found that the Chennai youngsters were at least 20-25% better in terms of analytical and problem solving skills, compared to their counterparts in other states.

(Asia Pulse/PTI)

Dec 11, 2004

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