Ace Urban (formerly L&T Infocity) will develop India’s premier digitally-enabled smart urban city, meeting all the requirements under Industry 4.0 in an area of 150 acres near Rushikonda in Visakhapatnam with a total investment of ₹3,200 crore.
After signing MoU with the State government in the presence of Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu at the CII Partnership Summit here, Ace Urban Director Maurya Pydah told The Hindu on Sunday that the project aimed at promoting innovative technologies would provide employment to 18,000. It would be named Ace Infocity.
World’s leading companies would be invited to set up units in the city.
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The new city would be the first of its kind, he said adding they were instrumental in developing infrastructure for hi-tech city in Hyderabad two decades ago. On an invitation from Mr. Naidu, the firm had agreed to establish much bigger infrastructure to enhance the brand name of Vizag meeting the requirements of cutting-edge technologies, he stated.
Units associated with IT and ITES, artificial intelligence, cloud management, blockchain and Internet of Things would start their operations in the city. Mr. Maurya said the project would be operational in 24 to 36 months.
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Site finalisation talks
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Madhurawada IT Special Economic Zone is located in the proposed digitally-enabled smart urban city.
Negotiations are in progress for finalisation of site allotment. “The blueprint for the project is likely to be finalised shortly,” Mr. Maurya said.
He stated that when Cyberabad was developed in Hyderabad the requirement was connectivity and bandwidth. “Now there is sea-change with technologies changing very fast and blockchain, IoT, AI, cloud computing and analytics emerging as new technologies,” he pointed out.
Visakhapatnam, which now has an turnover of ₹2,000 crore from IT and ITES units, would witness a quantum jump in not only volume of business but also in providing promising jobs to the IT professionals, he said.