Telangana: Startup State

Under K T Rama Rao’s leadership, India’s youngest state, Telangana, is trying to attract startups and other technology innovators, by thinking and acting like a startup, says Kalvakuntla Taraka Rama Rao (KTR), Minister of IT, Public Enterprises, Industries, MA & UD, Government of Telangana.

- Ankush Kumar

Please share your vision to promote IT and electronics industry in the state? What steps you are taking to ensure that the IT industry manages to grow and thrive in Telangana? In the last two years, out of the world’s top five tech companies we have been able to attract the top four to Hyderabad. Some of the globally recognized brands that we have in our state are Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Uber and Salesforce. We are also in talks with AWS. Today, Hyderabad has become the go-to destination for the IT industry across the world. So far Hyderabad was known for software development but now we want to bring more of product companies and hardware manufacturing companies as well. We have about three mobile manufacturers in the state but we are talking to more companies which are into the consumer electronics space. We are also setting up a medical devices park in Hyderabad along with two Electronic Manufacturing Clusters. The intersection of medicine with electronics is what medical devices is all about. Hyderabad will be known as the digital healthcare capital of the country. We call ourself as the startup state of the country. So we think and we also act like a startup. To promote our state globally, we are also setting up country desks in various parts of the world. For example, we are setting up two country desks in North America, one in Middle East, one in Far East, one in Europe and one more in Japan or Korea. Country desks are basically agencies that will promote Telangana abroad. Each of our desks will be given key focus areas and they will work accordingly.

What are the factors that are helping the state Government in promoting Hyderabad as the most promising investment destination in India?