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The Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) will soon launch 12 more Centres of Excellence (CoE) in various parts of the country.

STPI Director General, Omkar Rai, revealed this on the occasion of the 30th foundation day of STPI.

AIC STPINEXT, a CoE in health tech, big data and Artificial Intelligence will come up at Bengaluru while CoE in agriculture will be launched at Akola.

A CoE in Efficiency Augmentation at Bengaluru, FinTech CoE at Gandhinagar, SmartAgri IoT CoE at Patna, a CoE in Emerging Tech at Bhubaneswar and CoE in Industry 4.0 Technology at Visakhapatnam will also come up.

Five CoEs will come up in north-east, one each in 5 north-east capital cities -- Gangtok (IT Applications in Healthcare and AgriTech), Itanagar (GIS Applications including Drone Tech), Kohima (IT Applications in Graphic Design), Aizawl (Gaming), Agartala (Data Analytics).

For nurturing start-up ecosystem and to create world class software products by Indian start-ups, STPI has embarked the journey of establishing domain-centric CoEs in various emerging technology areas such as Artificial Intelligence and Computer Vision, Internet of Things (IoT), Fintech, Block chain, Augmented and Virtual Reality, Gaming and Animation etc through collaborative model.

STPI has in the past launched 13 CoEs at Chennai, Bhubaneswar, Mohali, Bengaluru, Pune, New Delhi, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Guwahati, Shillong, Imphal and Lucknow.

STPI under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Indian government, working with the objective of encouraging, promoting, boosting software exports, and nurturing the startup ecosystem in the country.

"Reimagination, recreation, restoring, and repositioning are in the DNA of STPI. We are constantly evolving apropos the dynamic needs of the Indian IT industry. We have also infused inclusiveness and competition in the work culture of the organisation. And all these have contributed to setting up 13 CoEs in various emerging technologies and subsequently planning for the launch of the next 12 CoEs in a time-bound manner. These CoEs will play a pivotal role in revving up R&D, innovation, IP creation, and product development, making India a product nation in times to come," said Omkar Rai.

STPI, which started its journey from three centres, now has 60 centres pan India with 52 centres in tier-II and tier-III cites. Today the 194$ billion IT industry comprising around 18,000-plus firms that directly employ 4.47 million strong workforce, that contributes 8 per cent of GDP is a testimony to the STPI's resolute performance in transforming Indian IT industry into a global outsourcing destination for software exports.

"Today our head is held high by fulfilling our primary mandate of boosting IT/ITES exports from the country from Rs 17 crores IT/ITES exports in 1992-92 to Rs 5.08 lakh crore during 2020-21 despite the Covid-19 pandemic," Rai added.

Under STPI's BPO Promotion Scheme, at present 247 BPO/ITES units are operational in 102 cities with reported direct employment of 41,628 people, with highest employment generation reported in Andhra Pradesh (10,673). IT/ITES/EDSM export has grown from Rs 526.69 crore in 2016-17 to Rs 836.42 crore in 2020-21 from Andhra Pradesh.