Tamil Nadu has a lot of basic ingredients to get to a $1 trillion dollar economy, said C Vijayakumar, CEC and MD, HCL Technologies.

It has a diverse, economic environment starting from manufacturing to services. Services are also quite broad-based between IT, technology , finance, agriculture and products, he said in a panel discussion on ‘Leveraging the Power of IT to Pave the Path to a $1 trillion Dollar economy in Tamil Nadu’. The event was held at UmagineTN 2025 on Thursday.

In Tamil Nadu, economic development is much more broad-based. It’s not just concentrated in Chennai. There are at least 10 or 15 cities which have good quality infrastructure and business environment, he added.

Middle-income country

However, for Tamil Nadu, to get to a $1 trillion economy, the per capita income should become somewhere between $10,000 to $15,000, which is really like a middle-income country, he said.( The State’s per capita is just above $4,000).

There are three critical things that need to happen. One is high quality talent. The second one is the access to a high quality job. And the third one is the overall allignment of entire ecosystem from government to academia and the citizens, to a very high productivity culture, he said.

Vijayakumar said the State should not just focus on low-end skills and volumes, but on high end skills and high quality jobs.