With a huge built-up area and vast land parcels lying ready but unoccupied in three IT parks in the state, the government has decided to engage international property consultants (IPCs) to market them.
As per government records, 20 million sqft built-up space and 1,000 acres are readily available in the three main IT parks and their satellite parks in the state. Another 10 million sqft built-up space is also getting ready.
The cabinet cleared the decision as the inhouse marketing team for government’s IT parks are facing stiff competition from private developers, who are setting up their campuses within the IT parks, are engaging IPCs to sell their spaces to various companies, said IT department sources.
With the help of IPCs, private developers are able to attract and bring multinational companies to their built-up spaces, according to the cabinet note. It is important to engage such IPCs for marketing the government IT parks and spaces too, in tune with the competitive and expanding market, the note said.
As per the government decision, the fee for IPCs have been fixed at equivalent to the lease rent for two months of the company that will occupy a built-up space. In case of land lease, the fee is equivalent to 1% of lease premium fixed as lease rent for the company occupying the land.
As per government data, 380.29 acres and 7,20,590sqft built-up area is lying unoccupied in the main campuses of the three IT parks — Thiruvananthapuram’s Technopark, Infopark in Kochi and Cyberpark in Kozhikode. The largest unoccupied land is in Technopark with 245.1 acres being available. The largest unoccupied built-up area is available in Infopark with 5,12,522sqft lying vacant.
Technopark, the country’s first IT park, is spread across 766.86 acres with 106 lakh sqft completed built-up space and 486 companies being operational presently. Technopark has five campuses — Technopark Phase I, Technopark Phase II, Technopark Phase III, Technopark Phase IV (Technocity) and Technopark Kollam.
Infopark in Kochi is spread over 323 acres with 92 lakh sqft completed built-up space and has 572 companies. Under it, Infopark has Infopark Kochi Phase I and II, Infopark Thrissur, Infopark Cherthala and Infopark TBC.
Cyberpark in Kozhikode, in association with Kerala State IT Infrastructure Ltd (KSITIL), has leased out five acres of SEZ land from KSITIL (which is the developer) in a 45-acre campus to develop the first IT SEZ building Sahya. It has a built-up space of 3 lakh sqft. Cyberpark presently has over 84 functional companies, as per government data.
