The Coastal city of Andhra Pradesh, Vishakapatnam has been the cynosure of national media from the past few days because of the news that several technology giants like Meta, Google, TCS, Cognizant, Sify, Accenture etc. have tied up with the state government to set up data centers and software development centres here in the coming years with an investment of $ 60 billion dollars approximately. No other city has witnessed such a strong influx of tentpole companies to invest thousands of crores in a short span.
Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu and IT Minister Nara Lokesh pitched Vizag as the future AI city and technology powerhouse and efforts in that direction are already on. The unprecedented attention towards Vizag in recent times has come as a big surprise to everyone, but it is indeed Nara Lokesh’s ambitious vision and persistent efforts that made a big difference to the city’s growing potential in technology sector.
Soon after coming to power, Nara Lokesh vowed to transform Vizag as one of the biggest tech cities in the country akin to that of leaders like Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Pune and Noida. All it took is just one bold decision and a brave policy to give a much needed filip to the city. And the decision is to allot government land at a negligible ’99 paise’ to Tata Consultancy Services ( TCS). This made all the difference and set to change the landscape of the city.
Nara Lokesh openly admitted during his media interaction earlier today that lot of people criticised the decision to allot land to TCS and said that a few have approached the Court against it. Lokesh strongly asserted that only because of that move so many leading companies made a beeline to invest in Vizag. He said that after offering incentive to TCS and Cognizant, others like Google, Sattva and Accenture came forward to collaborate with the state government.
Lokesh further said this is the most exciting time for Vizag to emerge as a greater economic region. He credited Prime Minister Narendra Modi for extending complete support and called it as a ‘Double Engine Sarkar’ that is on a bullet train. He further set an ambitious goal that Vizag will take just 10 years to achieve in technology what Hyderabad did in 30 years.
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