Hyderabad: As Telangana state’s IT exports grew at a nearly 14 per cent clip in 2016-17 and the sector provided close to 25,000 jobs even amidst the prevailing gloom, the state’s ambitious IT minister K.T. Rama Rao on Thursday said his sights were now on developing tier-II cities Warangal, Karimnagar and Khammam into satellites to Hyderabad by creating new IT hubs and corridors in those cities.
The minister, who released a report on the annual IT growth, noted that Telangana’s IT exports had grown at four per cent more than the national growth rate.
There were doubts about how the IT sector would fare in the new Telangana state, “but we proved that it has a bright future in the state”, the minister said.
In 2013-14, before the formation of Telangana, IT/ITES exports were at nearly Rs 60,000 crore, it has since grown over three years to '85,470 crore in 2016-17. “The goal is to reach '1.2 lakh crore by 2020,” he said.
At present, about 4.31 lakh employees work in the IT sector as around 24,506 new professionals were added in 2016-17, at a growth rate of 16 per cent. Another seven lakh people work in indirect services created as a result of IT/ITES growth. “We are expecting eight lakh employees in the IT/ITES sector and some 20 lakh indirect jobs by 2020,” Mr Rao said.
He said the government had launched sectoral policies in key areas, including cyber security, data analytics, data centres and open data policy in 2016, which attracted global investors. “MNCs like Amazon, Apple etc, have established units in Hyderabad. Our start-up initiative T-Hub has become a role model in the country and NITI Aayog has appreciated it. We will launch the second phase of T-Hub in the first quarter of 2018. T-Bridge, T-Work, TASK, etc., are assisting youth in upgrading skills and for start-ups,” he said.
Earlier, the minister launched ‘T-Wallet’, a utilities payment app of the state government “which will be available for smart phone users, feature phone users and no phone users (MeeSeva services) apart from online portal services”.
Digital Telangana
MeeSeva
222 services added in 2016-17; total reaches 572.
800 services offered by MeeSeva with eSeva for 40 departments
3,62,46,570 persons availed the services in 2016-17 by MeeSeva.
2.65 lakh people, the highest number ever across the country, availed MeeSeva service on a single day on June 22, 2016.
MOUs
MoUs inked with IBM Career Education, Internshala, Salesforce, CallHealth, TATA Strive, BSE Institute and others.
