Hyderabad: The IT sector in the state got a shot in the arm with news that Hyderabad will be home to Google’s largest campus outside of the US and it will be fully operational in four years.
On Monday, IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao entered into an MoU with the IT giant to set up their centre in Hyderabad, the first such centre in Asia.
As per the MoU, Google will be allocated 7.2 acres in Gachibowli, the main IT corridor of Hyderabad, and the company will build its own facility.
When fully operational, it will be one of the largest facilities globally with a built-up space of about 2 million square feet – one of the largest campuses of Google outside of the United States. The envisioned facility in Hyderabad will be Google’s first “own” campus in India.
Global head for Google Facilities and Work-places David Radcliffe, and Mr Rama Rao had a meeting at the Google headquarters in Mountain View and the MoU was signed between the Government of Telangana and Google Inc. on Monday.
The facility is supposed to start before the summer of 2019. According to Mr Radcliffe, about a year will be spent on planning and construction work is supposed to start in 2016 summer.
“Construction should take about two and a half years and we could have a facility as soon as early 2019,” he said.
The Telangana delegation also informed the Google team about the Water Grid project and how the same duct lines would be utilized to provide fiber optic cables to every household.
Google has embarked on a similar project called Google Fiber, which is being piloted in eight cities in the USA like Kansas City, Austin, etc. Google has agreed to study the Telangana model in detail through their team in India and explore the possibility of contributing to this project.
It is also a major achievement for the state to get an important commitment from Google StreetView to consider Telangana for piloting their major initiative in the country.
While StreetView has been extensively used in USA, Canada and many European countries, its applications in India have been limited so far. Google has launched StreetView in some tourist sites like Taj Mahal, Qutub Minar etc. in partnership with the Archaeological Society of India. StreetView has also been brought into the National Gallery of Modern Art in India with very high-resolution imagery.
Google is in talks with the minister of Home Affairs for permissions for conducting the StreetView exercise at a city-wide level. This permission is expected shortly. Google has agreed to make Telangana the first state to get StreetView for a complete city (Hyderabad) to begin with, with subsequent extension to other major cities and towns.
