Silicon Valley investors to invest big in Odisha’s Infovalley

Odisha Sun Times Business Bureau
Bhubaneswar, July 11:

A team of investors from Silicon Valley of the United States has expressed keen interest to invest around 300 million USD in IT and electronics system design and manufacturing sector at Infovalley in Odisha’s capital city Bhubaneswar.

A team of investors from Silicon Valley led by Ajit Manocha, former CEO of GlobalFoundries and member of US president Barack Obama’s advisory committee on advanced manufacturing and comprising Prakash Agarwal, leader in providing multimedia accelerators and Sanjeev Shriya, a leader in the smart card and biometric chip market in India, met chief minister Naveen Patnaik here on Thursday.

Highlighting the inherent advantage of Bhubaneswar as a destination for IT/ITES and Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) sector, Patnaik said the state capital has the potential to emerge as a ‘Silicon Valley’ in the next five years and the state government is taking all possible steps to build Bhubaneswar as number one IT destination in the country.

In order to promote such investments, IT Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have been established at Infocity and Infovalley in Bhubaneswar. Besides, the state government has brought out a new industry friendly ICT Policy-2014 with a number of incentives to boost the IT/ITES and ESDM sector in Odisha, he added.

The team impressed with the manner in which the state government is facilitating investment in the IT sector, one of its members pointed out that Odisha is the first state in India to sign a memorandum of agreement to tie up with Silicon Valley, USA to attract innovative technology-based industries.

The team members said they were looking at an investment of around $300 million in ESDM park in Infovalley that would to create employment opportunities for about one lakh people.