Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik’s Hyderabad Meet To Attract IT Investment

Bhubaneswar: Buoyed by global consultancy major Deloitte’s plan to set up a technology development centre at Bhubaneswar, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is set to embark on a two-day visit to Hyderabad to woo investors in IT and ITeS sectors.

Naveen leaves for the Telangana capital on his birthday on Sunday to attend the last investors’ meet, the curtain raiser event for the third ‘Make-in-Odisha’ conclave to be held in the state from November 30 to December 4.

High on the success of the investors’ meet at Bengaluru, known as silicon valley of India, earlier this month, the Odisha government pins high hopes on the roadshow at tech city Hyderabad, in presence of a host of multinational companies

Naveen will hold one-on-one meetings on Monday with business tycoons at Hyderabad to highlight investment opportunities in Odisha and woo investors. As per the schedule, Naveen will hold one-to-one meetings with several industry captains including the Hyderabad-based investors in the daytime while a mega roadshow for the investors has been planned in the evening, a senior official said.

In the evening, the CM will interact with investors at Hotel Taj Krishna, Banjara Hills, and apprise them about the diverse business-friendly ecosystem of Odisha.

The aim is to attract investments in IT, ITeS, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, textiles and Apparel, Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) besides food processing and renewable energy sectors.

Naveen’s Hyderabad programme will be significant as the state government has recently released its new IT policy that aims at helping the state secure a prominent position on the global map as a preferred IT outsourcing destination propelling employment opportunities and inclusive growth.

Witnessing an information and communication technology revolution, Odisha has developed Info City and Info Valley here for IT/ITes companies, but investment in the sector is still low as compared to Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Pune.

The state government has been at the forefront in the adoption of IT and experimenting with emerging technologies to drive and transform governance in the State to positively impact the lives of its citizens. Several incentives have been offered in the new policy and we expect it would definitely attract investment, said an official.

While Deloitte has already rented around 40,000 sq ft of area in Bhubaneswar for its proposed tech centre, a centre of tech giant IBM is being inaugurated on Sunday. The TCS will also expand the capacity of its centre at Bhubaneswar to 15,000.

Earlier in September, Naveen attended an investors’ meet in Mumbai and interacted with industrialists like K M Birla, Anil Agarwal and Anand Mahindra, top bankers and financial wizards. On August 31, he attended the curtain-raiser of the flagship biennial event in Delhi and held discussions pertaining to investment in Odisha with envoys of different countries. This was the third investment roadshow after Dubai and Ahmedabad.