Belgian family-owned retailer of food and non-food products Colruyt Group, with interests in Information Technology, petrochemicals and renewable energy, is evaluating the prospects of investing in Hyderabad.
Exploring options
The euro 9 billion group whose IT development centre in the city employs 350 people is keen on exploring all the options, something the Group chairman and managing director Jeff Colruyt sought to emphasise.
“It could be an IT venture, also food sales, electric, solar energy, can be both retail and wholesale, the possibilities are many,” he said without disclosing details of the Group’s plan for India. Mr. Colruyt is scheduled to meet Telangana’s IT and Industries Minister K.T. Rama Rao on Friday.
“We are looking at the possibilities… meeting with minister day after tomorrow,” he said, while replying in the affirmative to queries on expansion of the development centre as well as the Group’s retail arm making a foray into India. Both sourcing from India and imports to the country are on the horizon, he indicated.
Mr. Colruyt was interacting with presspersons at the launch of a National Digital Literacy Mission centre in Borabanda here on Wednesday.
The centre, set up by NASSCOM Foundation in association with the Group, will train residents of the locality and neighbouring areas in digital literacy.
Colruyt Group, its Head-India operations Hari Subramanian said while the funding is from the centre, Nirmaan Organisation is the implementation partner. As many as 1,000 people are to be trained a year on all digital devices, specifically computers and mobile phones.
Telangana IT Secretary Jayesh Ranjan said the State, by virtue of Hyderabad being a hub for IT, is poised to do well in improving digital literacy. The State government, he added, was keen on making everyone computer literate.
Nasscom Foundation CEO Shrikant Sinha said it was the 137{+t}{+h}such digital literacy centre of the Foundation across the country and there were plans to take this number to 250 by end of the year.
Such centres were being financed by the corporate sector as part of the CSR (corporate social responsibility) activities.
