Telangana's policies attracting global IT companies to Hyderabad

Thanks to the Telangana government's liberal trade policies, several national and international organisations are vying for investments in Hyderabad, despite the COVID pandemic, which has put the nation's economy off track.

Hyderabad (Telangana): For the development of the IT field, investments play a key role. If the government's policies are transparent, giant organisations in the field would come forward to invest. In this matter, the Telangana government has been yielding good results.

World-renowned companies are coming forward to invest in Hyderabad. Even during the coronavirus pandemic, there has not been much decline in this flow. Since Hyderabad is racing forward in the IT sector, big companies are looking towards Hyderabad.

For some time now, several institutions have invested in Telangana. Most of them are concentrated in and around Hyderabad. Subsequent to the commencement of TSI Pass, the number of industries that have come to Telangana is 13,662. With them, Telangana received Rs 2,04,038 crore in investments. Through them, in addition to IT and in several sectors, 14,50,000 youth have got employment and livelihood opportunities.

In terms of total investments, in real estate and IT sector 172 companies have invested Rs 56,900 crore. In addition to five world-renowned organisations -- Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft, corporate bodies such as Novartis, Sales Force, Well Spun, P & T have invested here.

In Hyderabad, where back-end activities in IT were restricted earlier, recently IT-enabled products and product development services too have expanded. With this growth, the Telangana government has been taking measures to extend the investments to all the four directions of the city. It has initiated action to expand activities, which have so far been concentrated in West Hyderabad, towards the East side as well.

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The Telangana government is developing five IT parks in Uppal, Nagole, LB Nagar, and Kompally areas of the city. For small-time IT industries, it has informed that it would allot plots in Kollur New Cluster, in addition to the New Tower in Kompally. It is also taking fast action to extend IT in tier 2 cities like Warangal and Karimnagar. Towards this end, it has formulated Grid Policy for the IT companies.

Due to the activities in business and service sectors, heavy data would also be generated on a daily basis. In the context of government regulations to keep the details within the country itself, the demand for local data centres would increase. Hence, the data centres industry is increasing by 15-20% each year. Hyderabad, which has gained a reputation as an IT hub and Pharma hub, is now also a data hub with Amazon moving in.

The Cloud Computing Wing of Amazon – Amazon Web services, is going extend 175 kinds of services such as Data Storage Cloud Computing, Data Base maintenance, Networking, Analytics, Robotics, and Application Development. The arrival of Amazon will pave way for more data centres to line up in Telangana.With this AWS Centre that is going to be established, the data requirements of the companies in South Indian states are going to be met. As a result, directly and indirectly, there will be more job opportunities available in Telangana.

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The coronavirus pandemic, which has shown acute negative influence on the country's financial situation, has not shown much effect on the incoming investments in Telangana. Even during the pandemic, investments kept coming into Telangana. From April 1, 2020 to October, including in IT, 1,658 industries have come to Telangana and through them, Rs 6,000 crore in investments and 55,000 jobs were obtained.

During the last financial year, Telangana IT exports have achieved more than double the growth than the country’s average. In IT exports, during 2019-20, Infosys, TCS, Tech Mahindra, Deloitte, and Cognizant have had maximum exports. Cyient and HCL have been exporting more than Rs 1,000 crore from Telangana.

One Plus, a Chinese Company which manufactures premium smartphones, has started a very big Experiences Centre in Hyderabad. The Centre which was set up in 16,000 square feet, is the first R&D Centre in the country for One Plus. Amazon, which is going to set up Asia Pacific Region web services in Hyderabad, with an investment of Rs 20,761 crore, will benefit web developers, start-ups, IT companies in thousands. Through the new AWS Centre, set up by Amazon in Hyderabad, banks, automobiles, educational institutions, government agencies are going to get cloud services.

Along with them, students through AWS Academy, AWS Educate bodies, are going to work for the development of skill-sets in web development. In the backdrop of Data Centres going to be available in a very large scale, sectors like e-commerce, government sector, banking, education and other fields, voluntary organisations, are going to get an opportunity to expand their activities.

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The Telangana government had initiated its IT policy in 2016. It focused on 10 sectors, block chain technology being one of them. Maintenance of Land Records would be possible with this technology. Similarly, new technology revolutions such as Artificial Intelligence, Data Analysis, Coding are forthcoming. The government is enabling several platforms to predict the future needs and provide the required skill sets.

The reason for national and international organisations vying for investment in Hyderabad, is the liberal trade policies that the government has been following. In the recently released 2020 City Momentum Index, released by JLL, Hyderabad has earned the reputation of the best city. While 130 cities competed for it internationally, Hyderabad bagged the first place.

The government is giving more preference to Digital Telangana. The Telangana government has assessed future needs well in advance and has been giving priority to latest technologies such as AI, Coding, Cloud Technology, and Robotics. It is making it easier for companies which intend to invest in Artificial Intelligence. It has been encouraging to increase IT activities through ISIC, TASK, T-Hub.

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