TRIVANDRUM: Kerala’s Left Democratic Front (LDF) government which came to power in 2016 targeted to create ten million square feet of built-up space in five years.

But officials feel the southern state has advanced much beyond that, thanks to the SmartCity Kochi, a joint venture with Dubai’s Tecom Investments, which is creating as much space in the port city.

“In addition to that, a host of co-development projects with private investors are underway,” said M Sivasankar, the information technology (IT) secretary of the state.

“Our focus now is on new areas like the internet of things, robotics, artificial intelligence and blockchain technology. We see immense scope in these areas.” The state has been promoting innovators of late, and it launched an exclusive zone for them in Kochi in 2012 — Startup Village — offering a lot of incentives to campus entrepreneurs.

“The young generation is coming up with a lot of innovations here. We are also focussing on creating such zones for young innovators across the state,” he said.

Recently, HDFC Bank, India’s second-largest lender, became the first to deploy humanoids, engaging one of them at one of its branches in Mumbai.

The robot was developed by young innovators at a startup here, Asimov Robotics, which has designed a few such robots that can minimise human interventions and ensure faster service delivery.

Though Kerala had the early bird advantage of setting up the country’s first exclusive zone for the software industry, Technopark, 25 years back, it lags far behind its southern neighbours in earnings.

In 2016, its software exports were worth just Rs 30.089 billion as against Karnataka’s Rs 1.25 trillion, Tamil Nadu’s Rs 339 billion, Telangana’s Rs 414.805 billion and Maharashtra’s Rs 640.64 billion.

Even Haryana (Rs 192.65 billion), Uttar Pradesh (Rs 164.51 billion) and West Bengal (Rs 69.90) are much ahead of the industrially laggard Kerala.

But the officials say that scenario is going to change for some proactive changes during the past few years that have started paying dividends.

The present government also is pursuing them in right earnest. They expect the exports to cross Rs 100 billion this year.