THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Automobile major Nissan Motors has offered to create over 3,000 jobs in IT and ITES sector within three years at its digital innovation hub titled ‘Nissan Digital’ to come up at Technocity. The state government has also offered various sops to the global firm. Nissan Motors will sign a formal memorandum of understanding with the state government on Friday on the project and it may commence operations this year itself. Considering the various sops offered by the state government, Nissan formally offered to create 3,000 jobs, but subject to the availability of quality talent with digital capabilities.
Nissan had already commenced hiring for its upcoming centre, Nissan Digital Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan handed over the order allotting space and prescribing the sops to a Nissan delegation led by chief information officer Tony Thomas here on Tuesday. Mr Thomas, an alumnus of the College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram, was learnt to have taken a key role in the project.
Nissan’s decision to set up its first digital hub, focusing on emerging sectors like electric cars and driver-less automated cars, will be a major impetus to the state in the global IT map. The state government also assured that a representative of Nissan would be included in the committee formulating an electric vehicle policy of the state.
Nissan would be initially allotted 1.2 lakh built-up space at Yamuna Building in Technopark phase-3. It would set up its own campus, Nissan Knowledge City, in 30 acres of special economic zone notified area in Technocity. Another 40 acres of adjacent SEZ land was also earmarked for future expansion. The lease rate will be '75 lakh per acre for 30 years and the operations and maintenance cost have been waived.
Nissan proposes to develop the area as electric vehicle and automated vehicle campus. The state government would set up electric vehicles charging station and also offer import duty exemptions. According to a statement from Technopark, the factors that attracted Nissan to Kerala are the talent pool in IT and engineering, airport connectivity, cost effectiveness, quality of life, social amenities, lack of traffic problems and positive feedback from the successful IT companies at Technopark.
