Bengaluru: Quick, which state in India has given potential investors a ‘Right to Single Window Clearance’? Telangana, India’s newest state. In a bid to outdo both Siddaramaiah’s Bengaluru, the nation’s technology capital, and Chandrababu Naidu’s Andhra Pradesh, Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao’s Telangana, or the ‘Start-up State’ in the era of start-ups, as its IT minister K.T. Rama Rao calls it, came to Bengaluru on Wednesday to showcase Hyderabad, promising investors to Mr Naidu’s ‘all permissions in 30-days or deemed approved’ policy – a single online form, single-window clearance with 43 government permissions within 15 days for starting projects of Rs 250 crore or more.
And for aspiring entrepreneurs, Hyderabad will soon be home to India’s largest incubator, T-Hub, with over 3.5 lakh sft of space when completed, and faculty from the Indian School of Business, IIIT and NALSAR to mentor start-ups on business, technology and legal and intellectual property issues. Admitting that he was in Bengaluru to address the IT industry’s concerns on three key issues, Mr Rama Rao said Telangana was past its birthpangs and had a stable political atmosphere and a decisive, agile leadership.
Worried about finding employable talent? No problem, the government will facilitate that, too, with the new Telangana Academy of Skill & Knowledge, TASKed with making 15,000 graduates employable, especially in Data Analytics, Cybersecurity and Design Engineering. “We recognise that Bengaluru is the leader by far, India’s Silicon Valley. But at Rs 54,000 crore in IT exports, Hyderabad is next only to Bengaluru. It has a lot of potential and aspires to be the nation’s IT Capital”, Mr Rama Rao said. His trump card, to Bengaluru’s embarrassment: “Hyderabad has three times Bengaluru’s infrastructure, and twice Chennai’s, at one-third the price”.
And if that’s not enough, the Telangana government has a land bank of two lakh acres spread around Hyderabad, a “tool to position the city and state for investments” that Mr Rama Rao intends to use to great effect.
