Sriperumbudur: India's next tech hub

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Sriperumbudur has emerged from near obscurity to become India's next electronics hub. This town near Chennai is evolving as India's answer to China's Shenzhen, reports CNBC-TV18.
 

 Sriperumbudur was earlier known as the birthplace of Vaishnavite saint Sri Ramanujacharya. Then in 1991 it became infamous as the place of Rajiv Gandhi's assassination. Today all that has changed. Sriperumbudur is India's poster boy for electronics manufacturing. Nokia, Flextronics, Foxconn, Samsung and others will invest more than a billion dollars here over the next few years and the pace seems set to quicken.

"I believe that the investments will be larger and it will be much quicker than we thought earlier." feels A Gururaj,GM, Flextronics India

With so much investment due, the comparison with China is inevitable. In 1979, China decided that it wanted to be the global elctronics manufacturing hub, and Shenzen was born. In the next 26 years, more than 30 billion dollars of investment was poured into Shenzhen. Today it makes about 10 % of the world's mobile phones. Sriperumbudur is being touted as India's answer to Shenzhen.

According to the estimates Sriperumbudur will make about 5 % of the world's mobile phones in two years. But companies warn that the pace could slow if Sriperumbudur's infrastructure deteriorates.

"The road and railway link is one and if we are looking at volumes coming in and going out then definitely airport will be one."Jukka Lehtela Director - India Operations, Nokia .While that's a warning the government should heed, for now, Sriperumbudur is riding the highway to prosperity.