AHMEDABAD: It’s one ride many in Ahmedabad may have missed. But one that the city has managed to finally clamber on to. And this time it promises to be one helluva ride.

“We are just in time to catch the IT bus as many players are waiting to invest in new locations offering good infrastructure at reasonable cost,” says an optimistic Raj Kumar, secretary, Department of Science and Technology.

Already of the 10,000-odd people estimated to be employed in IT and ITes sector in Gujarat, a chunk are in the Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar belt, that has found its way to the 13 clusters mentioned in a Nasscom-KPMG study on ‘Choosing a location for offshore operations in India’.

And even as the manufacturing sector continues to power the city, services — ITes, telecom, financial, pharmaceutical related outsourcing — is yet another engine to have kicked into life, to fire the megacity, says Pankaj Goswami, head (Gujarat), MaFoi Management Consultants.

“Services have finally come to Ahmedabad as other cities get saturated with higher cost of operations and attrition rates,” says former Gujarat Electronics and Software Industries Association president Rajan Vasa.

And even the dearth of manpower has not deterred players like MphasiS BFL Ltd from setting up a 300 people operation with plans to expand to 1000 for bigger projects over two years.