Athia Sethu
Kochi, 27 January 2025
The state intends to establish a new Data City in the near vicinity of Visakhapatnam and is likely to create employment for 2 million people within five years, as the Telugu Desam Party promised. The hub will be for data centers and facilities for artificial intelligence. The location for this Data City is to be the Madhurawada area near Visakhapatnam and the state government is expected to repeat the success of Hyderabad’s Hitec City.
The Data City will be on 500 acres of land and will attract tech companies because it provides the infrastructure for them to grow. The government has already started buying the land; it has allocated 80 acres to Google for the construction of a data centre and 30 acres to Tata Consultancy Services. The government is in negotiations with other companies such as Temasek Holdings and Cognizant to set up additional data centres in the area.
The state leadership presented the project at the World Economic Forum in Davos, seeking support from some of the world’s leading technology firms. Lokesh, one of the leaders in the state, expressed optimism that a large number of international IT firms were interested in coming to the state. Just as Hitec City, which is already doing well in Hyderabad, he believed that big companies such as Google would start, which would be followed by other players.
In planning to further expand the area for tourism, several tourist attraction sites will make it an excellent choice. Despite various financial problems confronting this government, its efforts are intense in improving Andhra Pradesh and keeping promises concerning job creation.
This initiative is a part of the state’s overall aim to decentralize development following losing Hyderabad to Telangana during the bifurcation of the state. In order to cope with changing demographics such as an aging population and fewer young people entering the workforce, the government also intended to come up with an official policy to regulate this trend. The state is the one trying to become a key nation in India’s digital infrastructure, competing with other states like Telangana and Maharashtra.
