Is Hyderabad heading to dethrone Bangalore as IT capital?

Despite Hyderabad trailing Bangalore by a wide margin in IT exports, the Telangana government has said it is aiming to outdo the Garden City and emerge as the information technology capital of the country in a few years. "We want Hyderabad to be the No 1 in terms of information technology, ahead of Bangalore, in the next few years," Telangana IT minister KT Rama Rao told reporters in Mumbai.

According to PTI, he said at present Hyderabad, which has been in a battle for IT supremacy with Bangalore for nearly two decades, accounts for only 13 per cent of the country's IT exports against 31 per cent from the Garden City. Rao said that the state, through its proactive policies, aims to double IT exports from the present USD 11 billion in the next five years.

He also said 15,000 jobs were added to Hyderabad's IT workforce of 3.20 lakh over the last 12 months, and claimed that this was the fastest anywhere in the country. When it comes to revenue growth of IT firms, Hyderabad reported a 16 per cent growth, which is 3 percentage points more than the national average of 13 per cent, he said.

Even though Bangalore hogged the headlines following the success of Isro's Mars Mission, Rao said 30 per cent of the components in the project were made by Hyderabad firms. It can be noted that Bangalore boasts of names like Infosys and Wipro, while Hyderabad has Satyam and Sify. The scandal at Satyam led to Bangalore to emerge as undisputed leader. Bangalore also lapped up start-ups, hosting the likes of Flipkart and RedBus.

Rao said his government will soon be launching the country's largest technology incubator for start-ups and has already signed up with reputed law schools and technology institutes in the city. He also noted that recently the city has successfully roped in Amazon, Uber and Tata-Boeing.

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