Telangana: Rising up as a start-up state of India

Kalvakuntla Taraka Rama Rao (KTR), Minister of IT, Public Enterprises, Industries, MA & UD, Government of Telangana in an exclusive interview with Ankush Kumar, shares his views on promoting Telanagana as a startup capital and explains how the state in a short span of time was able to top the 2016 list of all ‘India State/Union Territory’ ease of doing business rankings

By Ankush Kumar

Please share your vision to promote IT and electronics industry in the state? What steps you are taking to ensure that the IT industry manages to grow and thrive in Telangana?

In the last two years, out of the world’s top five tech company’s we have been able to attract the top four to Hyderabad. Some of the globally recognized brands that we have in our state are Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Uber and Salesforce. We are also in talks with AWS.

Today, Hyderabad has become the go-to destination for the IT industry across the world. So far Hyderabad was known for software development but now we want to bring more of product companies and hardware manufacturing companies as well. We have about three mobile manufacturers in the state but we are talking to more companies which are into the consumer electronics space. We are also setting up a medical devices park in Hyderabad along with two Electronic Manufacturing Clusters. The intersection of medicine with electronics is what medical devices is all about. Hyderabad will be known as the digital healthcare capital of the country.

We call ourself as the startup state of the country. So we think and we also act like a startup. To promote our state globally, we are also setting up country desks in various parts of the world. For example, we are setting up two country desks in North America, one in Middle East, one in Far East, one in Europe and one more in Japan or Korea. Country desks are basically agencies that will promote Telangana abroad. Each of our desks will be given key focus areas and they will work accordingly.

What are the factors that are helping the state Government in promoting Hyderabad as the most promising investment destination in India?

The vision of our Hon’ble Chief Minister to basically not just go for IT but to also focus on various sub-sectors with IT implications. We are the first state in the country to come out with eight different sub sectoral policies; innovation, rural technology policy, cyber security, data analytics, data center campuses and open data policy.

We also have policies for animation, gaming and multi-media entertainment etc. So all of these policies supported by the government give you lucid details for each sector. I believe that it is important for the government to back its initiatives with policies and legislation to ensure its effective implementations in India. On ease of doing business scale, in terms of quality of doing business, we are ranked very high in India.

We are setting new benchmarks as we have certain advantages in terms of large pool of resources, great weather and land availability. Power/ water is not an issue, quality of living is very high and cost of living is very low. All this makes Hyderabad a naturally attractive destination. Combining this with good governance and progressive policies makes it a killer combination. Therefore, today the entire IT world is looking Hyderabad as a go-to-destination and it will grow further in the times to come.

What steps has the state Government taken in the areas of skill development?

I am happy to share with you that we have formed the Telangana Academy for Skill and Knowledge (TASK). It basically brings about an alignment of the expectation of the industry and the academic institutions. So what is being taught in the academic institutions is aligned with the industry requirement. We have tailored made programs within TASK. For instance, if you are an electronic manufacturer and you want to come into Hyderabad and set up an industry, you require a unique pool of human resources. We can even tailor make a course curriculum and train human resources at our cost and give it to you.

Our plan is to ensure that TASK reaches to all the colleges and institutions within the state. On the advice of our chief minister, we are also trying to follow Germany’s model of duel vocational training.

India is an import oriented economy, how do you think the Government’s ‘Make in India’ initiative can help in increasing overall exports?

I think the country should transform into an export hub for manufacturing because China is getting more and more expensive especially in labour costs. And China was earlier known as the go to destination in manufacturing in the past.

India is sitting on the cusp of big opportunity as the workforce in India which is 64 percent will keep growing and it will be the biggest in the world by 2020. The country can achieve excellence in manufacturing. Make in India is a fantastic initiative. But the central government has to take more efforts and pull in different states which are progressive into this process, or else things cannot deliver as quickly as expected. As of now we import 17 percent of our requirement, which needs to change. We should not Make in India for India but make it for other countries.

Another key focus area on the Union Government’s agenda is the Smart City project. Do you think we can replicate what some of the developed nations have achieved in making their infrastructure smart?

Smart City is a very vague and abstract concept. I would rather look at certain components of the smart city and would not try to do everything in a brown-field project. For smart city projects, I would pick certain problem areas and would prefer Indian solutions from Indian companies for Indian cities. Our problem is unique, we cannot pick what Barcelona or Los Angeles have done and try to implement in Delhi or Hyderabad. So my belief is that we have to find our own formulas and solutions because it won’t work otherwise.

Any other ICT related policies that you are planning to launch in the near future?

We have launched eight sector specific policies. Two more are being launched in the next month. One would be on IoT and second would be on e-waste. So there would be ten policies within ICT. We are the first state to do this and we believe we will be setting new benchmarks and new standards in India.

The GST is considered to be the country’s biggest tax reform. What kind of impact that you think it will have have on India ‘s various sectors?

We have supported the GST in parliament, we have also ratified as the state legislature the GST amendment. So the one good thing from the industry perspective is that it rationalizes lots of taxes and uncomplicates things for them. It a good initiative because in this complex tax structure – one country one tax is definitely a good idea. Now how this will pan out for manufacturing state to consuming state we need to wait and see because the Government of India has promised to support whatever deficit that might come about for the next five years.

I believe GST should ensure that the same encouragement that was offered to manufacturing states — electronic manufacturing being one of the key areas; the duty differential was helping. I believe that GST should ensure that the same level of support is maintained irrespective of what form or shape it will be. I do hope that GST will take our economy a notch up because a two percent GDP growth will be seen through GST. We also believe that GST will contribute in uncomplicating things and attracting lot of foreign investments.