Quark Breaks Ground on Quark City in India

Denver-based Quark, Inc., mak­ers of InDesign-rival pro­fes­sion­al desk­top pub­lish­ing soft­ware QuarkXPress, is build­ing its own city in Mohali, Punjab, India.

After 18 months of plan­ning, the foun­da­tion stone was laid by Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh ear­ly this morn­ing (U.S. time). The chief min­is­ter hopes the project will gen­er­ate “25,000 direct and 100,000 indi­rect jobs.”

Said Quark chair­man and for­mer CEO, Fred Ebrahimi dur­ing the ground­break­ing cer­e­mo­ny this morn­ing: “A tru­ly envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble business-cum-residential park, Quark City is expect­ed to be one of its kind in the world.”

The 46-acre Quark City will con­form to United States Green Building Council stan­dards, and will be res­i­den­tial as well as com­mer­cial. According to India news provider, ReDiff, 30 per­cent of Quark City will be a res­i­den­tial com­plex for employ­ees of Quark, Dell, and biotech­nol­o­gy and oth­er IT companies–many new acqui­si­tions of Quark–who will be mov­ing in upon com­ple­tion, will set­up shop in the rough­ly 60 per­cent of Quark City zoned for com­mer­cial use. The remain­ing ten per­cent of the city will be in sup­port of the res­i­dents, with shop­ping, enter­tain­ment, edu­ca­tion­al, and med­ical providers.

Quark City is a $500 mil­lion USD project intend­ed to build jobs and state rev­enue in Punjab province, an area known for its edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions but not for high-tech busi­ness. The project was launched to “offer oppor­tu­ni­ty and infra­struc­ture” to the peo­ple of Punjab, the province in which Quark City and Mohali reside.

Quark already employs 850 peo­ple, pri­mar­i­ly in soft­ware devel­op­ment, in its $20 mil­lion Mohali Media House.

[Via red​iff​.com]