HYDERABAD: The Telangana government will soon come up with plans for establishment of four new information technology parks in the state, minister for IT and panchayat raj KT Rama Rao has said.
Addressing a gathering of about 200 women entrepreneurs at the government’s T-Hub at the International Institute of Information Technology campus here on Thursday, he said the announcement would be made very soon. Speaking about the government’s single window clearance mechanism for mega investors, he said more than 1,000 organisations had been given clearance in the last six months, paving the way for flow of investments worth Rs 25,000 crore and creation of 70,000 new jobs.
The event was organised by Facebook to introduce women entrepreneurs to its ambitious ‘Boost Your Business’ programme. KTR promised women entrepreneurs that if one had an idea, the government would do its part by providing business, entrepreneurial and financial mentorship through T-Hub. He lauded the achievements of a woman entrepreneur, Kalpana Rajesh, who launched Pelli Poola Jada in partnership with two others. Within three years, the enterprise’s worker strength has crossed 250.
“We are good at being cyber coolies. Our creativity is stifled at a very early age. It is our challenge to create more and more entrepreneurs. So we have T-Hub for those who want to be job creators, TASK for those who are job seekers and TEP for students aspiring to become entrepreneurs,” explained the minister. Listing out companies like Amazon, Google, Novartis, Uber and Facebook, etc the minister said that they were all either having or going to have their biggest offshore offices in Hyderabad. Google has already annnounced that it would set up its new campus in Hyderabad.
FB reaches out to women entrepreneurs
Ankhi Das, Facebook director of public policy for India, South & Central Asia, said the event was Facebook’s first-of-its-kind interaction with women entrepreneurs in Asia. There are 45 million SMEs in India contributing up to 45 pc of GDP. Up to 3 million are on the Internet and 2 million of them on Facebook, she said. According to her, Facebook chose Hyderabad for the interaction taking into account the government’s unique initiative called T-Hub. “We want to help budding entrepreneurs build businesses, campaign for capacity building, develop skills for building market strategy, create relevant content and reach target customers. Through ‘boost your business’, we do just that,” she explained. The programme aims to reach out to small businesses across the country to spread awareness about the potential that social media holds for the growth of their businesses.