Brand Hyderabad continues to surge even after the bifurcation of the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh. The historical city, which had been the growth engine of the undivided State, continues to be the driver of the new State of Telangana.
In the past one year, top corporate honchos of India met Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and evinced interest in investing in the State.
Now, Mr. Rao has decided to launch the Telangana Industrial Policy on June 12. “It will be a grand gala event. We are inviting all big business houses,” he says.
“Industry is bound to come to Telangana, which is going to be the most happening State in India. No city in India has the advantage of Hyderabad,” the jubilant Chief Minister said in an exclusive interview to The Hindu on the eve of the first anniversary of formation of the State.
Global corporate leaders such as Google and Amazon have come forward to make further investments in the city. While Google is setting up its biggest campus outside the U.S. at a cost of Rs. 1,500 crore, Amazon has decided to establish its largest procurement centre. Microsoft is said to be planning to expand its operations in the State. While Micromax and other mobile-phone manufacturers are said to have evinced interest in setting up their units, Citibank said that it would come up with a tailor-made package for micro, small and medium enterprises.
Government sources say Anil Ambani of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group had assured the Chief Minister that he would invest in power, industrialisation, media and infrastructure development.
Mr. Rao has promised that his government will provide land, power and water for setting up units.
He says Telangana is going to be a power-surplus State shortly, and the Telangana State Industrial Infrastructure Corporation has a land bank of 1,70,000 acres to allot to industry. Besides, there is a conducive work environment.
The proposed State industrial policy envisages, among various aspects, a single-window clearance for projects. “This single window will be without grilles, hassle-free and corruption-free. There will be no roaming around offices by investors, everything will processed by the government. We have also created a chasing cell in the Chief Minister's Office. The whole thing will be monitored by the CMO day to day,” the Chief Minister says.
Information Technology and Panchayat Raj Minister K.T. Rama Rao, who recently went on a fortnight-long tour to the U.S. to woo investors, said he had secured investments of Rs. 3,000 crore.
Besides attracting investments and establishing direct contact with Silicon Valley honchos, the Minister said, the big takeaway from the trip was restoring confidence of the information technology (IT) industry in Hyderabad as an investment destination. He was planning to hold a global investors’ meet in Hyderabad in February or March 2016.
On the flip side, some of the Hyderabad-based companies including SKS Microfinance, Lanco group and Agro Tech Foods have shifted their headquarters from the city in the past decade.
Satyam Computer Services Ltd., once an iconic company of Hyderabad, ceased to be a city-based company. After its promoters committed a massive accounting fraud in the company, Satyam had been acquired by the Mumbai-based Tech Mahindra, which subsequently merged Satyam with it.
The operations of SKS Microfinance, the only listed microfinance company in the country, in Andhra Pradesh plunged when the State government enacted a law aimed at curbing the questionable lending and recovery practices of microfinance institutions. SKS subsequently shifted its headquarters to Mumbai.
The diversified Lanco group, which is a major player in the power and infrastructure sectors, and Agro Tech Foods, a subsidiary of global food major ConAgra, have shifted to the National Capital Region for various reasons.
However, such developments seem to have not affected the investment flow into Hyderabad, which has become the home for many pharmaceutical and information technology companies in the past two decades.
