Maran woos investors in Silicon Valley

CHENNAI: Union Minister for Communications and Information

Technology, Dayanidhi

Maran requested the Silicon Valley investors to expand their base in India,

saying the Indian IT industry is poised for a growth of 30 per cent.






Addressing over 200 investors in Silicon
Valley
, USA on the sidelines of the Connect 2006 Road Show of CII (Southern

Region) Maran said: “The growth of the IT industry has been equally

supplemented by the growth of the telecom industry.”






“India is adding more than 5 million new telephone subscribers every month and
is in the top 5 countries having the subscriber base of over 100 million

telephone connections” he observed, adding that both the telecom and the IT

sector contributed tremendously to India's GDP growth of 8.5 per cent and

India now needs to achieve a 10 per cent growth rate.






“Twenty-five
years, five governments, six prime ministers — one Message — India is poised

for growth and nobody can stop it”, Maran said to a packed audience.






The minister said the call charges have come down drastically to two cents per
call and the talk time has increased considerably.






“This provided telecom services in India at an affordable price,” he added.





In his address Gopal Srinivasan, chairman, Connect 2006 and Director, TVS
Electronics said that the theme of Connect 2006 will be, "Creating a

Knowledge Driven Ecosystem".






“The Conference Sessions would focus on topics such as: IT driven growth in
Tier II Indian cities; knowledge satellite cities; Tamil Nadu — the emerging

electronics manufacturing hub of Asia; the talent challenge; R&D clusters

and industry-institute collaborative research and ICT in entertainment,” he

said further.






Srinivasan said that taking Silicon Valley and few others as models, we plan to
examine the issue of creating a Knowledge Ecosystem from the points of view of

Industry Institute Collaboration, Creation of world class infrastructure and

leveraging the benefit of industrial clusters such as collaboration between IT

and other industries like healthcare and bio-technology.






B S Prakash, consul general of India, San Francisco also addressed the
gathering.






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