|
Chennai, the capital city of Tamil Nadu is getting to be an IT hub next to Hyderabad and Bangalore. Chennai is a large metro city with a cosmopolitan mix of people. Chennai is ancient with a trace of foreign influence that include the French, Portuguese, and the Dutch and of course the British. It does retain its distinct Indian identity with its innumerable Hindu temples and classical dance and music, though. This is a bit of the ancient Chennai. The Modern Chennai is spread with technology parks (including software and bio technology) with another new one called Mahindra World City coming up on the outskirts. Chennai makes one realize that it has a diverse and well grounded economy that is based not just on IT and Business Process Outsourcing but also on banking and finance, automobiles, and also the manufacturing industry.
Chennai is proud to be already home to either the largest or the second largest development centre of the top six software services exporters in the country, leaving other cities in India jealous of this fact. In fact, it's not just the leading confederation of TCS, Wipro, Infy and Cognizant, which is adding jobs in the city's IT corridor, even emerging contenders like MindTree, Mastek, Polaris, Patni, Hexaware and Tech Mahindra are expanding their base at a very fast pace along the East Coast.
To mention and make this convincing, it would be useful to prove it with some examples. As of now, TCS, India's largest software services exporter with their headquarters in Mumbai, has its largest development base in Chennai.
"We have 23,000 people spread across half a dozen centres in Chennai. Clearly, the city is the biggest for us. When our Siruseri campus (on the IT corridor) becomes ready in a few months, we will have infrastructure for another 21,000 seats across 70 acres," a TCS spokesperson said.
In the case of Infosys, official data on employment or infrastructure ramp-up were not available. However, when the Mahindra City MoU was signed by the company in 2006, it promised it would create the "world's largest development centre" in Chennai with a seating capacity of 25,000 people.
While Wipro is scattering its capacity addition to cities outside Bangalore, Dr K Chandra, who heads the centre in Chennai, said, "Of our 75,000 software jobs, 10,000 people are based in Chennai. This is without the BPO operations. Our plan is to increase this further. We will add infrastructure to seat another 35,000 people in the next three years. Our focus now is to divert businesses to other centres other than Bangalore and, more importantly, focus on tier-II cities.
"
The same is the case for Cognizant Technology Solutions. Tamil Nadu accounts for over 40% of its global headcount and 50% of personnel in India. As of December 2007, Cognizant had 22,000 professionals based in either Chennai or Coimbatore, out of the 55,000 worldwide. A Satyam spokesperson said, "We have around 9,000 people in the city and we will scale it up by another 6,000 in the next two years. I can’t tell you if Chennai operations will overtake Hyderabad, where we already have 21,000 people working.
"
Going by the sheer size of plans and approvals Tamil Nadu has received till now, about 37 IT special economic zones (SEZs) are expected to be built by private developers in the next few years, many of them for software companies planning dedicated campuses. There are 11 dedicated software parks being set up by state agencies. Over and above this, there are 220 IT parks sanctioned by the state IT department. According to government sources, they have approvals for 73 million sq ft for IT parks alone.
Questions that arise while re-locating to Chennai
- How good is the city for raising a family?
- Is the city too conservative?
- Specialties of this city
The following note would clearly convince one and remove the above doubts -
As for language, Chennai is fluent in English, Tamil and Hindi too as a result of a mix of the metropolitan crowd. Chennai is well connected by buses and air. The Central Mofussil Bys Terminus is the largest bus station in South Asia. Having five major national highways, it is connected to the rest of the country. The Chennai International Airport doles out both the domestic and the international traffic.
More than fifteen International carriers touch the terminus connecting it with cities in South East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North America. Shipping of cargo is another major activity that keeps its runaway busy. The Chennai Port and the Ennore Port are the moving forces behind the city’s industrial and automobile industry. Despite being hit by the Tsunami in December 2004, with great damange, the city continues to take things in a positive stride with a lot of vibrancy.
Expatriates are moving to Chennai and several NRIs have returned after long stretch of time abroad. Chennai offers a lot of advantages compared to other cities in India. Chennai is globally connected, has good educational and medical facilities and culturally vivacious. To site an example from an NRI, and quote what he says, it would be more clear to say how Chennai could make one comfortable. He aptly states ‘I think the biggest plus as compared to a city like Mumbai is that you don’t have to grapple with a crowded metro system to get from point A to B or spend a fortune on cab rides. And if you compare Chennai with Delhi, again it has a much lower crime rate and is considered safer especially for women. To me these are big advantages that expats will appreciate!’
NRIs experiences prove that life in Chennai has changed from an indolent town to a more busy and worldly city. Despite the visible change, expats are still advised to ‘make the cultural adjustment expected even in the most modern Indian cities – to be a bit more conscious of what you wear, avoid display of affection in public etc.
Now that we have a jist of the life of NRIs in Chennai and the factors to consider for re-location, it is now essential that we focus on the planning of schooling and lives of their children. The following note will help explain this.
|
