The beginning of the year may not have augured well for the students of Information Technology (IT) after the fiasco at homegrown Satyam came out in the open. It was thanks to Satyam that many showed interest in taking up a career in IT, but the scam left a bad taste in the young minds, who may have been keen to join it. Though all this is history now, with the company going to new hands and raising hopes that all will be smooth soon.

Many may deny that the Satyam fiasco had any effect on students, but suddenly there was downsizing everywhere and those recruited were asked to sit on the bench. It has had some effect on campus recruitments of last year as some are still waiting for the final call from the company selected. Moreover, this year the companies gave the campus interviews a miss.

The YS Rajasekhara Reddy government on its part is trying to do its best to prove that all is well. It has allowed 15 companies to set up enterprises and take benefits of information technology to Tier-II and Tier-III cities. Speaking to the media, in the Capital recently, IT&C principal secretary Ajay Mishra said that with the setting up of these enterprises, there will12,000 jobs in the next two to three years.

Giving details, Mishra said that the small and medium-sized enterprises have been allotted 26 acres of land. “Of these, nine will set up base in Visakhapatnam, three in Kakinada, two in Tirupati and one in Warangal,” he said. He however refused to divulge the names of the companies or the amount of business they would garner.

The principal secretary said that 12 IT companies had begun operations in the state, while a whopping 69 new IT companies had registered. He said that the dozen companies, which began operations last year, had contributed over Rs 1,000 crore to IT exports.

Till the end of the 2008-2009 financial year, IT exports from the state have touched USD 6.5 billion. This is a hike of 20 percent over last year, he said, adding that the national growth rate during the same period was 13.5 per cent. Mishra said that despite the global economic recession, employment in the IT sector in the state reached 2,29,000 in 2008.

Since the last decade, the state government has been trying to position the state Capital as an IT destination to attract investments. Mishra said that presently, the state was ranked third in terms of exports and efforts were on to make it the first.