Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has booked about 30,000sq ft of space in the science and research park of IIT Kharagpur in Rajarhat to house its research and development team.
This is the first new investment by the software giant in Bengal since the Mamata Banerjee government came to power in May 2011. "Our entire research organisation with nearly 150 heads would shift to the new location, possibly by the middle of next year," a spokesperson said.
The research team is currently working out of the company's Ecospace address in Rajarhat.
TCS, the country's largest software service exporter, already owns two campuses in Calcutta. One of them is in Salt Lake and the other in Rajarhat. The company also has a few rented offices in and around these two areas.
According to a senior official at IIT Kharagpur, the research park would have 31 laboratories for R&D in various fields, including pharmaceuticals, life sciences, network design and high-performance computing.
"We are in talks with several industrial houses, including IT firms, to set up their research and development wings on our campus and promote closer ties between industry and academia," Pradip Pyne, registrar at IIT Kharagpur, told Metro.
Another IIT official described the research park as a "very forward-thinking concept".
"We are trying to bring together the IT industry, academia and the R&D teams of various government agencies and reduce the time taken to develop and operationalise a product. The things that we will bring to the table here along with the laboratories are our faculty and experts. Besides, we have equipment of the kind not available anywhere else in the east," the IIT official said.
TCS said it intended to recruit more professionals for the R&D unit. At present, the Bengal arm of the IT giant has a 30,000-odd headcount.
The company already has one such centre in Chennai and proposes to build a similar one in Mumbai. The main R&D unit is located in Pune.
Veterans in the IT industry said TCS's new acquisition and the recent allotment of a 15-acre plot in New Town for Cognizant's third campus would send out a positive message to other software companies about the future of IT in Bengal. Cognizant is the second largest IT employer in Bengal with a headcount of 17,000, followed by IBM's 8,000, Wipro's 4,000 and Capgemini's 3,000.
Wipro and Infosys are still awaiting special economic zone (SEZ) status for their proposed projects, which the Trinamul government has so far declined to give. Wipro and Infosys each have 50 acres in Rajarhat that the erstwhile Left Front government had provided at a subsidised rate in 2010, along with the promise of SEZ status for their projects.
Additional reporting by Subhankar Chowdhury
