Kochi: The Nissan Digital Technology Hub coming up at the Techno City in Thiruvananthapuram will provide 3,000 hi-end technology job opportunities within three years, said Nissan Motor Corporation vice-president and chief information officer Tony Thomas. A memorandum-of-understanding for the project will be signed soon.
Nissan and supplier companies will be offering these direct job opportunities, while indirect employment opportunities could be several-folds higher. The hub will be focusing on mechatronics, artificial intelligence, and driverless cars. Half of the staff working for Nissan in these fields will be at the hub in Thiruvananthapuram.
Since these opportunities will be knowledge-based, the salary package too will be good. Similar such Nissan hubs are situated in Nissan headquarters Yokohama, China, Paris and Nashville in the US. The fifth digital hub will be coming up in Thiruvananthapuram.
Initially it will be running out of a Nissan supplier company at Technopark. Infosys, TCS and Tech Mahindra are all Nissan's software supplier companies. The hub will be expanded to a 25,000 sq feet space at Technopark's third-phase buildings Ganga and Yamuna.
Later, the hub will be shifted to Nissan's own 30-acre campus at Technocity. Here, it will set up tracks to test driverless cars and other technology.
Boston Consulting Group was assigned the task of finding a location for Nissan Digital Technology Hub. But Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode did not find a place on the list of locations they suggested in India. But when they were asked to assess tier-two cities, Thiruvananthapuram met most of their requirements.
Key factors such as availability of qualified candidates, lack of traffic problems, airport connectivity, cost effectiveness, social amenities, good lifestyle, positive feedback from companies like UST that have flourished here, and the active support of chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Shashi Tharoor MP, the chief secretary and the IT secretary helped Nissan choose Thiruvananthapuram, said Tony Thomas.
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