Chennai in recent times have become a place for FDI. Foreign companies have liked Chennai more than other cities in India. Chennai is the Fourth largest city in India and 159th ranked city according to most livable cities in the world and 34th ranked city in the world according to population.
Government has located some places called Special Economic Zone (SEZ) which means a geographical region that has economic laws that are more liberal than a country's typical economic laws. The category 'SEZ' covers a broad range of more specific zone types, including Free Trade Zones (FTZ), Export Processing Zones (EPZ), Free Zones (FZ), Industrial Estates (IE), Free Ports, Urban Enterprise Zones and others. Usually the goal of a structure is to increase foreign direct investment by foreign investors, typically an international business or a multinational corporation (MNC).SEZ in India are Sricity AP, Hyderabad, Polipally, Velankanni,Surat,Ahmedabad,Cochin,Nagpur,Falta,Mangalore.
Currently, India has 1022 units in operations in 9 functional SEZs, each an average size of 200 acres (0.81 km2). 8 Export Processing Zones (EPZs) have been converted into SEZs. These are fully functional. All these SEZs are in various parts of the country in the private/joint sectors or by the State Government. But this process of planning and development is under question, as the states in which the SEZs have been approved are facing intense protests, from the farming community, accusing the government of forcibly snatching fertile land from them, at heavily discounted prices as against the prevailing prices in the commercial real estate industry.
In Chennai Sriperumbudur has been identified as SEZ , Sriperumbudur is strategically placed on
the Chennai-Bangalore highway, just about 40 kilometers from the city, and offers all facilities that the international industrial giants want for their business to operate in the country.Hyundai was one of the initial investors when they established their Indian car operations in 1999 in Sriperumbudur. Later, Saint-Gobain and Nokia, Ford, Hindustan Motors, Mitsubishi, BMW and lately Nissan set up operations turning this Chennai suburban town into a large scale industrial hub.
As of 2008, Sriperumbudur is a special economic zone with more than $2 billion invested by companies like Flextronics, Foxconn, Jabil, Dell and Samsung. The town is also regarded as India's answer to Shenzhen, China with its growth in electronic components manufacturing.
