"We have everything in place and the centre will be inaugurated shortly. This new 40,000 sq ft development centre in Coimbatore will house 400 people and it will handle application services, testing and infrastructure management," R Ramkumar, director, corporate communications, Cognizant, said.
He said the company received overwhelming response to the in-house relocation programme announced to deploy professionals for the Coimbatore centre.
"The number of people, who showed their willingness to move to Coimbatore, is double the size of the requirement," he added.
Asked on how the company would be hiring 7000 professionals planned for this year, he said that about 60-65 per cent of hiring was met through campus interviews.
"This year we recruited about 500 people from Anna University through campus interviews," he said adding, "the average salary for the entry level was about Rs 2.1 lakh per year.
Coimbatore is fast becoming as preferred destination as top IT companies have started looking at Tier-2 cities. There are about 19 engineering colleges in and around Coimbatore and it churns out over 6000 engineers every year.
It has also over 70 arts and science colleges and 14 polytechnics. The Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu, the nodal agency to coordinate IT investments in the state, is in the process of developing 40 acres of land in Coimbatore for setting up an Information Technology Park.