pune chief minister vilasrao deshmukhs invitation to infosys chief nr narayana murthy to assist in punes development as a mega it city couldnt have come at a better timeit growth in pune is poised for a quantum leap in the near future due to a multiplicity of factors such as the realisation of punes longfelt need for international air connectivity readily available manpower and low attrition while punes roads and power infrastructure do demand substantial improvement according to p venugopal director maharashtra software technology park of india stpi what has given pune a distinct edge over a major it hub like bangalore is the manpower availability and low attrition whatever be the state of the infrastructure roads power etc punes skill set is its usp and its attrition rate in the 5 to 10 per cent range is quite low he said citing the response from it firms in pune on a comparative scale the rate has touched as high as 70 per cent in some small it firms in places like bangalore he pointed out having already crossed the billion dollar exports landmark in 2004 punes it growth is projected to go up by 30 per cent by the end of this fiscal from the rs 6150 crore exports logged in in 200405 already by the end of october the city has crossed the rs 3000crore export mark venugopal said this years trend shows that a significant number of usbased parent it companies are showing a preference for pune as their indian base of the 60 firms we registered between april and october this year more than 20 are usbased it majors the stpi director said companies like the californiabased nvidia corp which is into programmable graphics processor technologies msc software providers of virtual product development solutions tacovisteon and glv process equipment are among these companiesin the ites itenabled services segment israelbased amdocs is coming up with its bpo arm amdocs business servicesforeign firms apart a number of engineering and it firms prefer pune be it in computeraided design system maintenance research and development or software development processing similarly domestic it majors are also viewing pune as an attractive destination for their expansion parallel to this growth is the significant investment in private it parksstpi pune which enrolled five new private it parks this year expects the number to go up to as high as 20 in a couple of years venugopal conceded that despite efforts the it scenario outside mumbai and pune has not shown much change the stpi has it parks in nagpur aurangabad nashik and kolhapur unless some big company moves in at these secondary locations the scope for a positive change is small he said after the heavy rains which lashed mumbai on july 26 the stpi had tried to convince some it firms to consider these locations but the interest shown was momentary he said