The days are long gone when Pune was considered to be the weekend jaunt for Mumbaikars. With a host of leading companies in both the IT and ITES segments setting up shop in Pune, it has emerged as an island of IT excellence. The Pune landscape is today dotted with a number of IT parks, both public and private, showing its prowess in the portals of the New Economy. One new addition to this list is the Cybercity project coming in the Magarpatta City residential complex, off the Pune-Sholapur road, in the vicinity of the posh Koregaon Park area.

Magarpatta City by itself is a unique concept, whereby 300 families who originally inhabited the land, came together to form a company, Magarpatta Township Development & Construction Company. Each family is a shareholder of the company, depending on the land it contributed. Just like other mammoth real estate ventures, Magarpatta City too plans the Cybercity to complement its residential facilities. Says Satish Magar, CEO, Magarpatta, “Having this commercial initiative in the midst of a residential set-up ensures congenial work atmosphere conditions and makes Cybercity Magarpatta a total real estate solution.”

In terms of real estate, Cybercity Magarpatta comprises over four million square feet, in which large organisations have a choice of dedicated buildings offering up to 1,00,000 square feet of office space. On the other hand, entrepreneurial ventures can have office space starting from 500 square feet in a separate incubator building. Magar is justifiably proud of the technology infrastructure that goes behind the Cybercity. There is a telephone exchange by BSNL with optic fibre connectivity provided by Reliance Infocomm. A strategic alliance with VSNL, STPI and other ISPs facilitates customisable bandwidth options. For enterprise communication, Cybercity Magarpatta has a dedicated earth station and offers satellite and terrestrial links for voice-data, video-conferencing and connectivity with worldwide customer workstations. Uninterrupted power supply is provided through Maharashtra State Electricity Board, in addition to 100 percent power back up through diesel generator (DG) sets. It also has tie-ups with Compaq and IBM for desktops and servers, Lucent and AMP for passive networks, Nortel and 3COM for active networks, Nortel and Cisco for WAN, and Microsoft, Oracle and Computer Associates for software. According to Magar, a host of big call centres like GE, Daksh and E-Funds have already evinced interest in setting up shop in Cybercity.