The delegation from Orissa in the US. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, July 14: It’s raining good news for the state as far as investment is concerned.

The California-based Silicon Valley Group will invest Rs 300 crore in the capital-based Silicon Institute of Technology for infrastructural development. Sonic Chips will set up an unit here to produce chips and the Best Western Hotels Group proposes to open hotels in Bhubaneswar, Paradip, Chilika and Jharsuguda.

“The announcements were recently made at Invest Bhubaneswar Symposium organised by the Orissa Society of Americas in California, which was attended by a delegation led by three Orissa ministers, educationists and entrepreneurs, said Dhanada Mishra,” the symposium co-convener.

“From 2011, there would be two annual symposia to follow up the investment process. While one will be organised in California in May, the second one will be held in Bhubaneswar in December. The events will be organised independently from next year,” he added.

While symposium convener Purna Mohanty, an IT entrepreneur and investor from Silicon Valley, talked about Orissa’s IT potential, Prabhu Goyal, part of the Silicon Valley Group and an investor, presented a paper titled “Striving to create wealth and drive social change: An experience in Orissa and the world”.

Chandra Reddy of Sonic Chips recounted his experience of setting up a developmental centre in Bhubaneswar and declared his intention of expanding his operations.

Sujoy Singh of Imgenex presented the success story of his venture followed by Kishore Mishra of Genuum, which has a development centre in Bhubaneswar in the high-technology VLSI area. Gokul Agrawal of CTC Education Pvt Ltd talked about his plans for a 1,000-acre Knowledge City involving investment of Rs 6,000 crore over five years. Bruce Grogan from Nebraska University representing Asian Institute of Public Health spoke about the varsity’s plans in the state.

“Around 120 select potential investors and entrepreneurs gathered along with the state government delegation comprising higher education, culture and tourism ministers Debi Prasad Mishra, revenue minister Suryanatrayan Patro and IT minister Ramesh Majhi,” said Mishra, who reached Delhi today from the US.

Tourism minister Debi Prasad Mishra talked about the tourism potential, citing the similarity between California and Orissa in terms of size, population and natural resource.

He also mentioned the need of an investment of about $10 billion in the state over the next 10 years in higher education. Three companies doing well in their respective areas — Tatwa Technologies in IT, Swosti Group in hospitality and Gayatri Solar in green energy — also made presentations.

“The delegation also visited the campus of University of California in Santa Cruz, Chamber of Commerce of City of Cupertino, DeAnza Community College, top management of CISCO in San Jose, San Jose State University, Stanford University, Chicago University and Seattle University of Washington, Apple Computers, Symantec and Hewlett and Packard,” Mishra said.

The higher education team lead by minister Debiprasad Mishra, during its visit to DeAnza Community College, invited the authorities to set up its campus in Orissa and the visiting leaders of private engineering colleges committed to accept DeAnza students into their degree programmes. DeAnza is the largest community college in the US.

“The IT delegation visited CISCO campus in San Jose where demonstration of latest technologies from the company was held. These remote learning and video-conferencing technologies called ‘HealthPresence’ and ‘Telepresence’ would be of a lot of interest to many institutions in Orissa. The company has expressed its interest to locate to Bhubaneswar to support these technologies in India,” theIBS co-convener said.

Dr Nihar Nayak, assistant professor in School of Medicine, Stanford University, discussed a proposal for partnership with medical colleges in Orissa to expand women’s health programme. Earlier, a smaller group of the delegation led by revenue minister Surya Narayan Patra visited the port in Vancouver, Canada and discussed with the Indo-Canadian Business Council about export of various commodities like foodgrains, chemicals and fertiliser through Paradip port. They also discussed with the port authorities to explore possibilities of setting up sister port relationship with Dhamra and Paradip ports. The team also requested the possibility of investing in cruise service along Orissa’s 480-km coastline.

Prof. Binayak Rath, the vice-chancellor of Utkal University, Devdas Chhotray and vice-chancellor of Ravenshaw University were part of the delegation.