The government of Maharashtra is planning to set up a liason office in the Silicon Valley in the US to sell the state as an attractive investment destination, Dake said.

The state government has decided to develop the Mumbai-Pune belt as the information technology or knowledge corridor, the state chief secretary P Subrahmanyan announced. Connectivity will be provided in the entire strip between Navi Mumbai and Pune by laying optic fibres along the highway.

Exports from Pune are expected to cross the Rs 1,000-crore mark after the park is operational. This year Pune companies areexpected to cross Rs 500 crore in exports. Most of the companies which have taken up plots here are expected to complete construction by end of 1999 and start operations by early 2000.

MIDC will be investing around Rs 30 crore in developing the infrastructure for the park at Hinjavdi, which is around 13 kms from Pune. The industry would be channelising around Rs 100 crore in investments in the initial phase.

The infotech park is coming up on 75 hectares of land with 48.52 plotable land. Of this 36.09 hectares has already been committed with Wipro taking up 10 hectares and Infosys 8 hectares. The STP, Pune and VSNL too will be opening up its office in the infotech park

Infosys will be investing around Rs 50 crore in the first phase. After completion, the Infosys campus will accommodate 2,500 engineers and have a built up area of 3.5 lakh square feet.

Apart from plots, MIDC will also be constructing a 20,000 sq ft building to offer office space to smaller IT companies. It will have a business incubationcentre to nurture first generation entrepreneurs.

The state government is setting up two more parks on a smaller scale in Nagpur and Auranabad. An international hardware park is coming up at Dronagiri in Navi Mumbai opposite the JNPT port CIDCO.