Thiruvananthapuram, Dec 6 (IANS): UST Global -- the state's largest employer in the IT sector -- as part of a strategic shift has decided to turn a catalyst for new start-ups, and has also given the green signal to its employees to work on their own ideas, said a top official.

UST-Global, one of the first IT companies that opened shop in the Technopark campus here in 1999, has 22,000 employees, and over 9,000 of them work in its two centres -- here and in Kochi.

Manu Gopinath, Chief People Officer of the US-headquartered entity, told IANS that the fulcrum of their company with offices in 26 countries is here at the Technopark campus, from where all the crucial operations are taking place.

In Kerala to attend the annual conference of the company, Gopinath said: "Today the stage has come where creation of new jobs in our company will no longer be on a linear pattern compared to the growth of our company, instead we have decided to concentrate on promoting start ups and integrating them into our system in an indirect manner."

"We already have started working with a few startups here and abroad, and we are looking to be associated with the Kerala Startup Mission, so as to speed up our efforts to turn a catalyst to the efforts of the Kerala government. Successive state government's have fuelled our growth in the nearly close to two decades that we have been here," said Gopinath.

UST-Global currently has operations in six Indian cities, apart from the two in Kerala, and is prepared to launch in other cities, depending on the client needs.

Their client list includes giants like Walmart, Anthem, Amazon and CISCO, who have stuck with them ever since they began.