This US state has offered Infosys one of the largest incentive packages ever. Here are the details

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Many of the US states are now focussing on luring Indian IT companies and offering huge incentives.
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One of the US states which has rolled out a red carpet for Indian IT companies, especially Infosys is Indiana.

Indiana is offering around $31 million in incentives to Infosys as the state looks to employ many of its local IT professionals.

Mostly, the incentives will be in the form of tax abatements and one-time grants. What is being dubbed as one of the largest incentive packages ever handed out by Indiana, the incentives will cover majority of Infosys’ cost of setting up its centre.

As per several reports, Infosys said it will spend about $8.7 million to lease and equip its office space in the state.

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"States, cities and counties can all offer incentives. The idea is to pick places that offer incentives and has a local college network that can provide talent that is cost-effective and can be trained. We aren't going to be hiring from Stanford or MIT,” an IT executive told ET.

The Infosys deal took a few months to hammer out, Indiana governor Eric Holcomb said in a statement. Holcomb is also planning a trip to India to sell his state to other IT companies, he said.

The Indiana Economic Development Corporation plans to offer up to $15,250 in conditional tax credits for each job the company creates and up to $500,000 in training grants.

"Midwest states are generally more aggressive in holding out incentives because they haven't seen the kind of job creation that states like New York and California have,” Ganesh Natarajan, chairman of skill development platform 5F World, told ET.

Meanwhile, chairman of industry body Nasscom Raman Roy said the incentives had nothing to do with the H-1B visas and were related to the jobs that the IT industry creates.

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However, this is not a new system as in the past, Cognizant also received such incentives and expanded in Tampa, Florida.

But incentives will become increasingly important. Unlike India, where IT companies control where they deploy employees, in the US, they will have to build centres across the country as they look at attracting Americans to work with them.

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