Telangana government has unveiled a new ICT Policy and with it plans to develop Information Technology and IT-enabled services sector in the State to double exports to ₹3 lakh crore and create more than three lakh additional jobs over the next five years.
Of these, over 50,000 of the jobs are expected to be generated in the Tier II and Tier III cities, in the backdrop of an emphasis on taking IT beyond Hyderabad, thus positioning the locations as IT hubs of the future. A number of initiatives and implementation mechanisms have been identified and incorporated to achieve the goals, including training in basic Artificial Intelligence for all technology graduates and setting up of a ₹1,300-crore startup fund to support over 8,000 startups, IT and Industries Minister K.T.Rama Rao told the ICT Policy (2021-26) launch function here on Thursday.
The policy replaces the previous one that Telangana had launched in 2016 for five years. IT/ITeS, product development, engineering and R&D, electronics, innovation and entrepreneurship, skilling, upskilling and reskilling, contactless, paperless and presence less governance, digitally empowered citizens, taking IT beyond Hyderabad, thrust on emerging technologies, and a cloud-first policy among others will be focus areas in the coming five years.
The Minister said IT exports, which were around ₹57,000 crore at the time of Telangana formation in 2014, stood at ₹1.45 lakh crore last fiscal. Around 6.5 lakh people are employed in the sector at present — with 2.5 lakh jobs created in the past five years. In the new policy, there will be special focus on electric vehicles, battery storage systems, consumer electronics, medical devices and automotive sectors. “We believe we can attract over ₹75,000 crore in investment and [create] over three lakh jobs in the electronics sector,” he said.
Mr.Rao, who is also Minister for Municipal Administration and Urban Development, said a dedicated Smart Cities wing is to be created in collaboration with the MA&UD Department with an aim to create over 40 smart regions in the State, benchmarking with the best smart cities in the world.
IT and Industries Secretary Jayesh Ranjan said the second ICT policy might not seem very different from the previous one. “This is because the first one has done exceedingly well... key aspect of the [new] policy is we want citizens to be at the centre stage,” he said.
Nasscom chairperson Rekha Menon, who was the chief guest at the launch, said Telangana, with its progressive policies, has always set a benchmark and the path-breaking initiatives are the reason behind its spectacular growth in the field of technology.
Exchange of documents for MoUs, announcement of new projects, presentation of awards and launch of National Centre for Additive Manufacturing (NCAM) logo and Startup Telangana Portal, which aims to be the one-stop destination for the startup ecosystem of Telangana, marked the event. T-FACE, which is a virtual incubation platform for supporting startups in VLSI/Fabless Chip designing space, was also launched.
