The Kerala Cabinet, led by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, has given the green light to the state’s Information Technology Policy 2026. The policy aims to position Kerala as a prominent knowledge and innovation hub in India within the next five years. It sets a goal to secure a minimum of 10 per cent of India’s total IT export share and create around five lakh new jobs in the IT sector and related industries.
The policy focuses on expanding IT infrastructure capacity by threefold through private sector involvement and decentralized growth in emerging urban and semi-urban areas. It aims to nurture an intellectual property-driven knowledge industry ecosystem, emphasizing sectors like space, aerospace, defense, electronics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), quantum computing, and genomics.
A key aspect of the policy is to boost the number of startups in the state, with a target of supporting up to 20,000 startups as part of the broader innovation and entrepreneurship agenda. Additionally, the policy prioritizes universal digital access, aiming to achieve 100% household internet connectivity through enhanced fiber-optic infrastructure statewide.
To enhance governance and citizen services, the policy proposes the development of a unified enterprise architecture for accessing government services. It also plans to migrate more e-governance applications to cloud-based platforms, ensuring responsible data usage, security, and privacy protection. The policy advocates for state-controlled data exchanges to support data-driven solutions and mandates the use of open-source technologies for government-funded software projects.
