Thiruvananthapuram, Dec 6 (IANS): Kerala's biggest IT employer UST Global on Friday announced to expand its workforce in the state to 10,000, said an official.

Talking to the media during the company's annual developer conference D3, Chief Operating Officer, Manu Gopinath said that their brand new campus will be opened at Kochi and when it happens, their strength would go up from 8,000 to 10,000 employees in Kerala.

"We began from Kerala and today operate in 25 countries and the global work force is 23,000, of which 14,000 is in India, of which 8,000 are in the two of our centres at Kochi and here," said Gopinath.

"We have already launched our own laptop brand and for that we have got huge support from the Kerala government. Soon we will be expanding our manufacturing facility," added Gopinath.

Gopinath also pointed out Kerala needs to equip its talent here in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and also in the area of soft skills and then it could scale even greater heights.

Sunil Kanchi, Chief Information Officer of UST Global, said this year they have acquired four companies and invested in four others and this will be their pattern in future also.

"Globally we have partnered with 365 start-ups and we are closely associated with the Kerala Start-up Mission and we are open to provide our full support to it," said Kanchi and added that Kerala, is a very cost effective destination as far as IT infrastructure is concerned.

UST Global was one of the first IT companies that opened at Technopark here.