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Kochi Smart City To Be Ready By 2020: Official

Kerala’s signature IT project, SmartCity Kochi, will be fully operational in 2020, said a top official today.

According to Jaber bin Hafez, Vice-Chairman of SmartCity Kochi, “The third phase of the ‘Smart City’ project would be completed by 2020.”

Hafez also assured that there would not be any ‘unreasonable delay’ in completion of the project. He lauded the support of people and the state government and technology partners in implementation of the venture.

The Kochi Smart City’s first phase – 6.5 lakh square feet space — was inaugurated in February this year by the then Chief Minister Oommen Chandy. “The first phase has already been commissioned and very soon 5,500 people will be working in it.”

Read more: Technology Evaluation Critical For Smart Cities Initiative

SmartCity Kochi is an IT SEZ under construction in Kochi, Kerala. Smart City (Kochi) Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd. is a joint venture company formed to develop the Kochi Smart City project. Government of Kerala, and TECOM Investments, a subsidiary of Dubai Holding are the main investors of the company.

This project envisions minimum 8.8 million sq. ft. of built up space out of which at least 6.21 million sq. ft. will be specifically for IT/ITES/allied services. The project is expected to create over 90,000 direct jobs.

SmartCity Kochi is one of the first two projects of SmartCity’s vision to build a large network of knowledge-based industry townships across the world. Other being SmartCity Malta, whose first phase was inaugurated in October 2010.

Speaking at a recent Smart Cities India expo in New Delhi, an event centered around building of smart cities in the country, Ravinder Pal Singh, Director, Solutions Strategy and Business Development, Dell said, “Evaluation of the best compatible technology to be integrated in a smart city environment will be pivotal for the success of the ambitious 100 smart cities initiative.”

The announcement of building 100 smart cities in the country by the center in the year 2014 attracted a plethora of IT giants including IBM, HP, Dell, Cisco etc along with their channel partners queuing up to participate in the initiative.

The official believes in the smart city project, open architecture and space for scalability come as two vital factors owing to the rapid advancements in technology.

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