Calcutta, April 24: Infosys and Wipro have agreed to invest on the outskirts of Calcutta Rs 500 crore each that could generate 10,000 jobs in five years, provided the Bengal government hands over a promised 90 acres to each company.

The two infotech giants, waiting with investment plans for two years, have been offered land near Vedic Village, off Rajarhat, for building their campuses. Infosys will go in for a special economic zone but Wipro has not yet specified the category.

Both the government and the companies seem to have made some compromise on land price, a dispute which, combined with red tape, led to the delay.

The government has brought down its original price of Rs 2.16 crore to between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 1 crore an acre. But the location also has changed along with the price: unlike the original New Town Rajarhat, which is in the municipality, the new site falls in a panchayat.

The units will come up on a 1,200-acre IT city, for which 400 acres have been acquired so far. No timeframe has been announced for starting construction.

Kris Gopalakrishnan, the CEO of Infosys, and Mohandas Pai, director, met chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee at Writers’ Buildings today. A few hours later, Tamal Dasgupta, senior-vice president and head of Calcutta operations, Wipro, also met the chief minister in the presence of state IT minister Debesh Das and secretary Siddhartha.

The respective memoranda of understanding were signed on April 3.

“We are very glad that finally things have worked out and we are on our way to set up our campus, which will be a special economic zone, in the state. We will invest Rs 500 crore in a development centre for 5,000 people in the first phase,” Gopalakrishnan said.

Infosys wants to set up a multi-service, multi-technology centre covering consulting and business process outsourcing. Wipro also committed a similar investment amount over the next three to four years. “We are very keen to participate in the IT township. This reinstates our faith in the state,” Wipro’s Dasgupta said.

A spot of worry is the risk of a fresh tangle of red tape and other hurdles associated with land acquisition. (See Metro)

The land is part of 600 acres that will be developed by Akash Nirman Ltd, a joint venture between Webel and Vedic Realty. The IT department has been promised 600 acres out of the 1,200-acre township in return for Akash Nirman building the infrastructure for the full area. The rest will be developed by Vedic Realty to build a “green” IT township.