Amaravati : India’s fourth largest global IT services company HCL Technologies (HCL) is all set to become the anchor client of an upcoming IT cluster being developed near Andhra Pradesh state’s new capital Amaravati.
A senior AP government official said HCL chairman Shiv Nadar and chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu are likely to make a joint announcement about HCL Tech foray into AP next month.
AP investment promotion board, headed by chief minister Naidu, has already cleared the company’s proposals, which entail an investment of Rs 500 crore in two phases, according to government officials. The company did not respond to queries related to its AP plans.
HCL would set up two green field campuses across 27.5 acres of land with Rs 300 crore investment in phase 1, which see commencement of operations as early as from next year, and another Rs 200 crore investment in phase 2 related to the second project. The company’s proposed operations would include IT, BPO services as well as the high-end engineering R&D, according to the officials.
Besides agreeing to provide the necessary land, the state government has also allotted 42,000 square foot of space in a ready-built tower to HCL for a skill development centre to train local boys and girls for their possible absorption in future jobs to be created by the company. The company has promised to create 3000 jobs in the first phase and 2000 jobs in the second phase, each spread across a timeline of five years.
HCL Tech’s move to expand its operations into AP comes at a time the Indian IT companies were fearing the slowdown in global business, while raising the hopes among hundreds of tech graduates coming out of the engineering college campuses in districts like Krishna and Guntur. Also HCL will be the first major company to come forward to establish operations in Vijayawada region where the efforts to create an IT cluster by the previous governments had met with little success.
“An ecosystem conducive to the IT companies would take shape with the entry of a prominent player like HCL in this region. We consider this as a big breakthrough,” a senior IT department official told Business Standard on Tuesday.
While AP contributes a substantial amount of human resources for the IT sector, the growth of IT industry was not much in the region for various reasons including the local tech graduates’ preference to migrate to big cities in the south such as Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai for greater opportunities.
According to the plan submitted to the AP government, HCL proposes to complete the construction of the first IT center and the skill development center by June and start the regular operations with 500 employees from October 2017. It would start the training programme for local graduates from the temporary premises from July, 2017.
Besides the usual incentives that are linked to the investment, land and jobs, the company has also sought provision to run the operations in 24/7 shifts and engage women employees across the three shifts.
With 1.10 lakh employees working on its rolls Noida-headquartered IT services company operates out of 32 countries and has a consolidated revenue of $ 6.7 billion for 12 months ended December 31, 2016.
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