Hyderbad: Tech giant Google is set to have its first own facility in Asia — one of its biggest outside the United States — in Hyderabad, to be made operational by the summer of 2019.
In an MoU entered with the government of Telangana, Google has decided to build a facility of two million sqft at an investment of Rs 1,000 crore. Once fully equipped, it could house about 13,000 employees — double the company’s present strength in India.
The TRS government, which is keen on large scale expansion of the IT industry to portray the state as tech-savvy and investment-friendly, has allocated 7.2 acre to the company in Gachibowli, the main IT corridor in Hyderabad.
At present, Google operates from a rented space in Hyderabad, which will also be the first Indian city to have Google Street View.
The agreement is a major achievement for the TRS government led by K Chandrasekhar Rao which scoffs at the claims of former united Andhra Pradesh CM N Chandrababu Naidu of having built the fabled Hi-Tech City, about 15 years back.
The new facility would come up near the Microsoft development centre — the first such facility outside the US — for which Naidu claims credit.
Though groundwork for the MoU had been underway for some time, the breakthrough came at a meeting in the US between Telangana IT minister K Tarakarama Rao and David Radcliffe, global head of Google Facilities and Workplaces.
Rao, who holds an MBA from City University of New York, is touring the US vying for investments for the new state. “Excited to announce that Google and Govt of Telangana have inked an MoU to build their largest campus (outside the US),” KTR, as the minister is popularly known, tweeted.
Incidentally, Naidu’s son Lokesh Nara is also in the US and in an unofficial capacity is garnering NRI support for his father’s initiatives in residuary Andhra Pradesh. He also managed to meet US President Barack Obama for a few minutes at an event.
