Software Technology Park

28/12/2021 0 By indiafreenotes

Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) is a science and technology organisation headed by Omkar Rai. It was established in 1991 by the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology with the objective of encouraging, promoting and boosting the export of software from India.

Domain centric centre of excellence is established in association with blue-chip companies and academic institutions. A Blockchain CoE is set-up in STPI incubation centre in Gurugram in year 2020.

  • IoT OpenLab at Bengaluru
  • Electropreneur Park at Bhubaneswar
  • VARCoE at Bhubaneswar
  • FabLab at Bhubaneswar
  • National Data Repository at Bhubaneswar
  • FinBlue at Chennai
  • NEURON at Mohali
  • MOTION at Pune
  • IMAGE at Hyderabad
  • Apiary at Gurugram
  • MedTech CoE at Lucknow
  • IoT in Agriculture CoE at Guwahati
  • Animation CoE at Shillong
  • Emerging Technologies; AR/VR CoE at Imphal

Electropreneur Park

STPI has established a joint venture to set up an ‘Electropreneur Park’ with the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA). This is aimed at supporting 50 startups working on electronics product designing and development over the next five years. The initiative is a subset of the government’s ‘Make in India’ mission, aligned with entrepreneurial and innovation focus. Currently, there are 2 Electropreneur parks in New Delhi & Bhubaneswar.

Next Generation Incubation Scheme (NGIS)

Next Generation Incubation Scheme (NGIS) is one of the flagship incubation scheme by STPI To build innovative technology products and solutions in an indigenous manner by offering comprehensive support & services to budding start-up ecosystem in India. STPI envisioned setting up 21 Centres of Excellence in emerging technology across India to provide proper handholding to the startup ecosystem for building indigenous products and IPR creation.

STPI: India BPO Promotion Scheme

STPI envisaged under Digital India program launched the India BPO Promotion Scheme (IBPS). this scheme seek to incentivize establishment of 48,300 seats in respect of BPO/ITES operations across India. STPI is the nodal agency of this scheme under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. Director General STPI Omkar Rai has announced to launch 48,000 such seats across the country, with a target employment of 72,450 in the sector. The government provides financial support of up to Rs 1 lakh per seat under two plans; India BPO Promotion Scheme and North East BPO Promotion Scheme. The Scheme is distributed among each State in proportion of State’s population with an outlay of Rs. 493 Crore. 39,390 employment reported as of April 2021 under the India BPO Promotion Scheme (IBPS).

Visakhapatnam has created 10,000 jobs under the India BPO Promotion Scheme (IBPS), Andhra Pradesh state got 13,792 seat, out of 45,792 seats in India.

STPI Role

STP units exported software and information technology worth Rs. 215264 crore in FY 2010–11. The state with the largest export contribution was Karnataka followed by Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Haryana and Telangana. STPI has a presence in many major cities of India including the cities of Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Trivandrum, Kanpur, Patna, Bhubaneswar, Kolkata, Mumbai, Nagpur, Warangal, Gandhinagar, Kakinada, Lucknow, Pune, Surat, Tirupati, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam.

Besides regulating the STP scheme, STPI centers provide a variety of services including high-speed data communication, incubation facilities, consultancy, network monitoring, data centers and data hosting. STPI provides physical hosting for the National Internet Exchange of India.

The tax benefits under the Income Tax Act Section 10A applicable to STP units has expired since March 2011. While the Government has chosen not to extend the Sec 10A benefits against the demand by the IT units, most of the STP registered SME units will be affected, and now will have to pay income tax on profits earned from exports.

A new incentive scheme for IT and ITES companies is under discussion. It will help dispersal of IT industry in smaller cities and also support STPI-registered units which have not come under SEZs as well as other units which are not covered under any incentive scheme. This incentive scheme is seen as an alternate scheme to compensate the STPI units, but the same would be restricted to those units located in tier II and III cities.