Ponnala invites entrepreneurs into ITIR project

Hyderabad, Nov 14 (INN): "IT means not Information Technology but 'Indian Talent'. You people made this Bay Area into a Silicon city.

Now you come to Andhra Pradesh and make it another Silicon city," said Ponnala Lakshmaiah, Minister for IT &C to the group of IT Entrepreneurs in a joint meet organized by the Federation of Indus Entrepreneurs Group and CEO Club in Hotel Hilton in Fremont, CA on Wednesday.

Ponnala said that the Government of India has sanctioned ITIR (Information Technology Investment Region) for Hyderabad for an estimated 202 Sq kilo meters land as the Investment zone, the first and largest one in the country.

The Centre, as well as Government of Andhra Pradesh, have taken all the steps to implement the Phase I of ITIR from 2013- 2018 and invited entrepreneurs to come to Hyderabad.

Explaining the advantages of Andhra Pradesh, Ponnala said that Andhra Pradesh is the first State in the country implementing MeeSeva in a big way with 180 services, handling 30 million transactions, around 150,000 tasks per day.

Similarly, Andhra Pradesh is one of the fast growing internet connected States in the country with already over Rs 4000 crores spent on 4G Services and coverage of more and more towns and villages with broadband connectivity.

Andhra Pradesh Government has also started Animation , Gaming & Media Center with Rs 300 crore investment developing animation and gaming industry quoting that large part of popular English film 'Life of Pie' was made in Hyderabad.

Ponnala said that Andhra Pradesh is producing 30 per cent of country's engineers and State Government has been working on Jawahar Knowledge Centers covering 400 Engineering colleges out of 700 Engineering colleges for imparting employable skills and functioning as inter phase between Colleges and IT companies. The IT Minister assured all the support and guidance from his Ministry claiming that they are a 'click' away.

The Minister also explained that the status or growth rate of IT business or turn over or exports have not come down at all during the last 3 years through AP is witnessing agitations and disturbances quoting that in this period only IT giants Google, Infosys, etc., have increased their presence in Hyderabad, Amazon is setting up the biggest office outside USA in Hyderabad, so is Google.

Earlier, IT Department Secretary Sanjay Jaju made a power point presentation explaining in detail on how Hyderabad got ITIR sanction, its benefits and advantages and the growth parameters. TANA Pas President Jayaram Komati advised the entrepreneurs to make use of the visit of IT Minister and officials to the Bay Area.