The company intends to acquire the 90 acres behind the Vedic Village at Rajarhat for its new building by the end of this calendar year, said Suresh C Senapaty, executive director and chief financial officer.

Wipro has a large investment plan for Kolkata and they are satisfied with the way their operation has grown in the city.

The company wants to start constructing the new building by early 2009.

At the same time, Senapaty said there were certain glitches the company had to face in acquiring the land. The company hopes that the state government will be on track in handing over the land.

Wipro came to Kolkata in 2005 and in the last few years it has been on the lookout for land in the city for expansion.

Wipro and Infosys, however, did not agree with the state government’s quoted price of Rs 2.16 crore per acre in Rajarhat, which is beside the existing tech hub of Salt Lake electronic complex, on the grounds that it was too expensive.

The state government then decided to create a 1200-acre tech city behind Vedic Village on a public-private-partnership basis and promised to allocate 90 acres each to Wipro and Infosys. The price at which the land will be sold to Wipro and Infosys has not yet been decided.

Wipro in Kolkata operates from its 19-acre campus with a staff strength of around 5000. Majority of its employees, around 4500, are in the BPO business while the rest are in software services export.

In 2007-08, Wipro exported around Rs 400 crore worth of software from the Kolkata centre.

Regarding West Bengal’s performance, Senapaty said he was happy with the functioning of the government.