Infosys Technologies will be creating a 334,000 sq ft centre to accommodate 2,300 professionals who will generate Rs 500 crore in exports. The Pune facilities will be the biggest after Bangalore. The project will be completed in two phases. Phase I will see an investment of Rs 60 crore and will be completed by September 30, 1999, and will create a 167,000 sq ft facility to house 1,200 professionals. Thisfacility will be fully operational by 2000.

Infosys' development centre is already operational in Pune from a leased premises. "Pune is doing a lot of mission critical mission work and handling Japanese and European projects. It accounts for 10 to 15 per cent of Infosys' revenues," said Nandan M Nilekani.

Fourty-three-year-old Nilekani is all set to take over as managing director, president and chief operating officer with effect from March 31, 1999. Nilekani will be in charge of all operations of the company. He will also be chairman of the management council, which is the supreme executive body below the board of directors. About this decision, Narayana Murthy said: "As a growing company our operations are becoming more complex and bandwidth is increasing it is important that younger people get opportunity to add value".

Nilekani announced the creation of the `Infosys Fellowship' for a three-year higher education or PhD programmes in 13 educational and research institutions in India. Infosys will begiving Rs 6 lakh to each of the institutions in the first year. Three of these institutions are in Maharashtra including IIT Mumbai, NCST, Mumbai and the Computer Science department of the University of Pune. There will be two `Infosys Fellows' in each of these institutions.

Earlier State chief secretary, P Subramaniam, the chief guest of the function, urged the government departments at all levels to keep pace with Infosys' schedule and provide critical infrastructure support.