SmartCity, Kochi

Infobox Company
company_name = Smart City
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genre = Infrastructure Service Provider
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location_city =Kochi
location_country = India
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industry = Information Technology Business Park
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Smart City Kochi is a planned industry township for Information Technology and enabled services, media and Bio-technology, to be constructed in Kochi, Kerala in India. Dubai Internet City is the main investor of the project which has the potential to create over 100,000 jobs (direct employment to 80,000 people and indirect employment to another 20,000 people). [cite web |url=http://www.rediff.com/money/2004/nov/23smart.htm |title=Smart City @ Kochi: 100,000 jobs likely |publisher=Rediff]

History

The project was originally initiated by A K Antony in 2003 when he was the chief minister of Kerala. Later, during Oommen Chandy’s chief ministerial period, he was very keen about going ahead with this project. For this purpose, he invited the Dubai Internet City officials for a feasibility study and later the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed. Due to protest from opposition parties, he could not make it a reality.

After V. S. Achuthanandan took over as the chief minister, he also showed interest in this project and invited the Dubai Internet City team for another round of discussions. He proposed new suggestions and altered the earlier MoU prepared during Oommen Chandy’s time. [cite web |url=http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/business/2005/September/business_September217.xml&section=business |title=MoU for Smart City inked |publisher=Khaleej Times]

On 13 May 2007, the officials of the Government of Kerala and TECOM Investments and Sama Dubai signed the final agreements. [cite web |url=http://business.maktoob.com/News-20070423094018-Government_of_Kerala_TECOM_sign_deal_for_SmartCity_Kochi.aspx |title=Government of Kerala, TECOM sign deal for ‘SmartCity Kochi’ |publisher=maktoob.com]

Agreement

Initially, the Dubai Internet City invested over $400 million in Smart City. It is a joint venture between Tecom and Sama Dubai. Smart City is in a vast, convert|1000|acre|km2 of land on the outskirts of Kochi, where the state government has set up the Infopark.

According to the agreement signed with the Government of Kerala, the park, on completion, must have 8.8 million sq ft of built up space with a minimum of 6.2 million sq ft for IT. Spread over convert|246|acre|km2, SmartCity Kochi would become one of the largest IT parks in the country. It is the first SmartCity project in India. [cite web |url=http://www.kerala.gov.in/news_07/14april_07.htm |title=Smart City Project: Agreement signed |publisher=Government of Kerala]

SmartCity seeks to build a large network of knowledge-based industry townships across the world. SmartCity Malta, the agreement for which was signed with the Maltese government in April 2007, are the first two members of SmartCity's global network.

References

ee also

*Dubai Internet City
*Smart City, Malta

External links

* [http://www.smartcity.ae/ Official Website]
* [http://www.tecom.ae/ TECOM]