Chennai to host CONNECT 2007

CHENNAI, INDIA: The Government of Tamil Nadu plans to open seven SEZs outside Chennai city shortly.

It also has plans to develop the tier-two and -three cities, where IT parks would be expected soon. “The announcements for the same would be made shortly,” said C. Chandramouli, IT secretary of Tamil Nadu, while announcing the seventh edition of the State’s ICT event, CONNECT 2007, scheduled here from 14 to 17 of this month.

The IT secretary also said that the State has several plans to create a quality talent pool. “The number of professional graduates increases year by year, but still we have not met with the quality. The MNC’s are going for only tier-one colleges, which would be just a handful. But the rest are left out. The only reason behind this is quality of education and we have planned to revise the syllabus and improve the standard of education provided to the students, by providing more quality materials and other stuffs.”

Technical sessions and seminars will be held as part of CONNECT 2007, jointly promoted by the Confederation of India Industry (CII) and the Government of Tamil Nadu.

CEOs from the ITeS industries will speak on the development and measures taken to develop the industry in the State.

The event will bring together delegates from the ICT industry – from both international and domestic -- academia, industry, government, bio-network facilitators and patrons in one single platform.

“CONNECT is entering into the seventh year after successfully completing 6 years through which Tamil Nadu has emerged as the destination of choice for knowledge-based industries and has projected it as the leading electronics manufacturing hub of Asia. Fifteen per cent of the total revenue in software comes from Chennai and it has constituted almost five billion in revenues till date and is said to grow more ”, said Gopal Srinivasan, chairman, CII.

The theme for the seventh edition of CONNECT is 'Innovation Through Integration-Building an Inclusive Ecosystem.'

M. Karunanidhi, chief minister of Tamil Nadu will inaugurate the event in the presence of A Raja, union minister of communication and IT.

“As for as the investments concerned we have got more investments from abroad and MNCs after the CONNECT programme. The development that Tamil Nadu has attained is enormous. More and more IT concerns are looking for investment. Apart from software, the hardware industry is also looking good and more entrepreneurs are getting into the business,” said S. Mahalingam, chairman, CONNECT 2007.

He added that many IT firms are targeting tier-two cities. “We are also focused on developing tier-two and -three cities.” Mahalingal hoped that the coming CONNECT programme would be instrumental for developing two- and three-tier cities.

Nasscom president Kiran Karnik, TCS CEO S Ramadorai, Satyam Computer Services managing director B Rama Raju, IIT-Chennai director M S Anand and McKinsey and Company partner Noshir Kaka are some of the key speakers scheduled to address the conference.