Addressing the gathering at Connect 2006 in Chennai, Lakshmi Narayanan, co-chairman, Connect 2006 and president and CEO, Cognizant said that the job market in Chennai alone would require more than 56,000 people in the next 12 months.

Narayanan went on to add that Tamil Nadu is perhaps the only state that can boast of having all the top 10 IT service companies in India, as well as the top five global IT service giants.

Tamil Nadu to have an IT academy soon

"These companies have over 50,000 employees in Tamil Nadu and it's projected to double in two years. And the indirect job creation could run into many lakhs. It is a state with a global appeal."

He further added that the IT industry is expected to grow from approximately Rs 26,000 crore (Rs 260 billion) today to over Rs 80,000 crore (Rs 800 billion) by 2011.

"This could potentially generate over 400,000 direct jobs by 2011. The announced plans of major corporations in Chennai alone will lead to a job market of over 56,000 in the next 12 months."

Tamil Nadu, he said, has recently seen large investments in hardware manufacturing also with investments from Nokia, Flextronics, Motorola and several others. There are also investments by the ITES/BPO companies.

"We have a diversified set of high growth technology industries, promising a synergistic and balanced growth for a period of time," he added.

Narayanan also sees automotive, healthcare, entertainment and animation industries as potential growth drivers for IT.

"For example, at the intersection of automotive and IT is automotive electronics; at the intersection of healthcare and IT is medical instrumentation and telemedicine, and at the intersection of entertainment and IT is animation and gaming."

As Tamil Nadu is uniquely positioned to leverage these traditional industries and IT, it can create a powerful value proposition for global corporations, he said.

So, what is needed to achieve the targeted growth? Narayanan pointed out that the state's academic infrastructure has to be strengthened; tier-2 cities have to develop and become attractive to the industry; faster decisions on investment proposals is required, and greater availability and reliability of communication bandwidth is a must.