KITCO India

Kitco is an Indian public sector engineering consultancy organisation headquartered in Kochi, Kerala. It is the first technical consultancy organisation (TCO) in India established by the government in 1972.

Formerly known as Kerala Industrial and Technical Consultancy Organisation, KITCO Ltd was set up in 1972 to speed up the industrialisation process in the state of Kerala. It was with initiative of IDBI and Kerala Government that the organisation was established. The success of KITCO experiment later prompted the central government to set up similar TCOs in many other states also. That was how APTICO (Andhra Pradesh), ITCOT (Tamil Nadu), MITCON (Maharashtra), NITCON (Punjab), GTCO (Gujarat) etc. came into being. The company with headquarters at Kochi, Kerala, is considered as a Central public Sector Organisation with 85% share holding by Central Sector Institutions and is subjected to Govt. audit. Today, 49% of the shares of the company are held by Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI). Chairman and managing director (CMD) is the Chief Executive and a board of directors nominated by the shareholders advises the CMD in policy matters. KITCO was established primarily to assist public sector banks operating in Kerala state to assess the proposals to start small scale industries, submitted to the Bank with a view to get financial assistance. In the initial years, the organisation studied the project reports, prepared feasibility reports for the banks and also prepared project reports for new entrepreneurs. Over the years, the environment and market in which KITCO operated underwent material changes. The overall industrial climate in the state had passed through many vicissitudes; the new entrepreneurs, many of whom had the benefit of training of EDPs conducted by KITCO, developed the competence to make their own project reports acceptable to banks; and banks had further strengthened their own internal competence to identify and appraise the viability of projects. On its part, the state government had also begun to look for professional support from KITCO for larger projects/assignments. Overall, these developments helped facilitate a qualitative shift in the status of KITCO, from the level of consultants for SMEs to that of a multi-functional and multi-disciplinary organisation offering a wide range of services to the industrial and infrastructure sector, and to a wider spectrum of clientele including those outside the geographic boundaries of Kerala.

The eleven arms of the organisation are:

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