Technology Park: Snapshots

A technology park is an Industrial complex where all types of facilities are provided for the growth and development of Technology Business Enterprises. However, a technology park need not have formal links with higher education.

Technology & business incubator:

The incubator incorporates a new feature ‘graduation’, which implies that a start-up firm attains certain level of maturity after a specific period of probation. The technology and business incubator can be considered akin to each other; the major distinction is that the later caters to a wide range of tenants not necessarily technology intensive firms.

Software Technology Parks of India (STPI)

Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), set up in 1991, is an autonomous organization under the aegis of Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India. The very existence of STPI is to promote 100% export of Software and IT services. It ensures conductive environment and infrastructure facilities to 100% export-oriented units in software development (and services), in order to boost the Software and IT service exports from India.

Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) acts as a single window in providing services to the software exporters and incubation infrastructure to SMEs. It has also played a developmental role in the promotion of software exports with special focus on SMEs and start up units. Under the STP scheme, companies: are allowed complete duty-free import, need not pay corporate tax till 2010, will get single-window clearance and dedicated communication links... [http://www.mit.gov.in]

A Software Technology Park (STP) may be set up by the Central Government, State Government, Public or Private Sector undertakings or any combination thereof. An STP may be an individual unit by itself or it may be one of such units located in an area designated as STP Complex by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. Provision is also there for an entrepreneur to set up facility as Infrastructure Provider for STP units under the scheme.

In 1990, the STPIs were established through three separate autonomous societies at Pune, Bangalore and Bhubaneswar, which were later, merged in June 1991 into a single corporate entity and in quick succession STPIs at Noida, Gandhi Nagar, Hyderabad and Thiruvananthapuram were established. All STPs were equipped with dedicated earth station equipment for providing Data Communication links.

Since 1996, the State Governments' started taking a very proactive role in promoting the IT industry. After the Govt. of Karnataka came out with the first IT policy, many of the State Governments followed suit. The success of STPI was not limited to the capital cities alone with STPI spreading it wings to secondary cities like Mysore in Karnataka and has, at the last count, spread to as many as 21 cities in a short span of 2 years.

STPI centers : STPI Head quarter is in New Delhi. The nodal offices are administered by the Directors of the respective centres at :

Allahabad	Aurangabad	Bangalore
Bhilai	Bhubaneswar	Chennai
Coimbatore	Dehradun	Durgapur
Gandhinagar	Gangtok	Gurgaon
Guwahati	Haldia	Hubli
Hyderabad	Imphal	Indore
Jaipur	Jammu	Jodhpur
Kanpur	Kolkata	Kharagpur
Kolhapur	Lucknow	Madurai
Manipal	Mangalore	Mohali
Mumbai	Mysore	Nagpur
Nasik	New Delhi (HQ)	Noida
Pondicherry	Patna	Pune
Ranchi	Rourkela	Shimla
Srinagar	Shilong	Thiruvananthapura
Tirunelveli	Vishakhapatnam	Vijaywada
Tirupathi	Trichy	Warangal

State Performance: A case of Karnataka

The first Software Technology Park of India was set up in Bangalore, Karnataka (STPI-B) in 1990. STPI-B has in past incubated over 15 companies including the likes of Infosys in its early days. Currently, STPI is working on setting up a five member industry committee to drive this concept together with industry-academia collaboration. The services offered are STP Scheme, Electronic Hardware Technology Park (EHTP) Scheme, Innovative Incubation Services, Overview of EXIM Policy and Procedures [http://www.blr.stpi.in/soft.net/index.htm]. In STPI Bangalore- ORCHID Techscape is an innovative incubator supported by Industry, Government, Academia, VCs. It provides Ready-to-use Incubating Infrastructure for start up companies, Integrated Data centre / server room and Business Support Services consisting of accounting, human resource, legal & administrative support. The Incubator houses a number of Units and many Companies have moved out of ORCHID Techscape as independent units.

Performance Analysis of STPI Karnataka:

Growth of STP registered companies