State takes new Tech Mahindra building on lease

The plug-and-play facility is meant for allotment of space to IT companies

A view of the new building of Tech Mahindra in Visakhapatnam, which is taken on lease by AP Electronics and IT Agency.

VISAKHAPATNAM: The new building of Tech Mahindra has been taken on lease by the AP Electronics and IT Agency (APEITA), an autonomous society under the Government of Andhra Pradesh, for allotment of space with plug-and-play facilities to IT companies.

Of the 11-floor building (including parking space in the basement) located in the heart of the city, ground-plus-four floors are ready for allotment. Once the total facility is refurbished with the required facilities, it can provide seating capacity for 2,200 employees.

APEITA CEO Srinivasa Moorthy told The Hindu on Thursday that the new building would have plug-and-play facility of one-lakh square ft., of which 60,000 sft was kept under cold shelve.

Depending on the requirement of the prospective allottees, interiors and other requirements will be developed at a later stage.

As on date, Mr. Moorthy said that space had been allotted to IT companies with a capacity of 300 seats and foresaw a bright future for Visakhapatnam to emerge as a destination for investment in IT.

The government has already taken on lease space in a new building belonging to the Visakhapatnam Urban Development Authority (VUDA) at Seethammadhara and a private building housing Pantaloons showroom on the VIP Road. The space has been allotted to IT units, most of them started by Telugu NRIs from the U.S. and other countries.

Mr. Moorthy said they had taken 24,000 sft on lease at Seethammadhara and 35,000 sft on the VIP Road.

Mahati Software building on Hill No. 2 of Rushikonda in the Madhurawada IT Special Economic Zone was recently converted into FinTech (financial technology) Tower and allotted to Paytm and other companies.

He said, once construction of the two blocks of Millennium Tower with a total sft of two lakhs was completed by September next, space would not be a constraint for allotment to IT companies from across India and abroad.

Visakhapatnam, the largest industrial city in A.P., presently has an IT turnover of Rs.2,000 crore.

“We are planning to register a five-fold growth by 2020 if everything goes well,” said IT Association of AP president Ravi Eswarapu.