In a major win for the Government of Telangana, it has now signed an MoU with Google, under which the internet giant is going to set up its biggest campus outside the States in Hyderabad. It will be a 2 million square feet facility, with a total investment of around Rs. 1,000 crore.
The campus is expected to be ready by 2019 and will house more than 13,000 employees. It will be first company-owned campus in Asia, and the biggest campus outside US.
Telangana’s Information Minister K.T. Rama Rao, who is on an official visit to the US, has signed the agreement with Google Inc. at its headquarters in California. As per the agreement, the state government will allocate 7.2 acres in Hyderabad’s Gachibowli locality to the company.
Currently, the company is operating out of a leased facility in Kondapur locality in Hyderabad with an employee base of about 7,000 people. The employee headcount will double once the facility is ready.
This agreement with the company will create about 6,500 additional jobs. Currently, Google has about 70 offices in 40 countries, out of which, four offices are in India, including cities like Mumbai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.
David Radcliff, Global Head at Google, said,
The company will spend about 12 months on planning and construction will start around the summer of 2016. Construction should take about two and a half years and we could have a facility up and running as early as 2019.
K. T. Rama Rao also met the Google Street View team, which has agreed to make Hyderabad the first Indian city to be fully covered by Google’s Street View. Subsequently, Street View will be extended to other major cities and towns of Telangana as well. Later, it will be extended to other cities of the country.
The IT Minister also made some specific requests to utilize Street View for monitoring deviations from approved building plans, property tax collection and mapping of industrial land banks located in different parts of the state, which the company agreed to support.
