HYDERABAD: IT and Industries Minister D. Sridhar Babu on Friday said that the Telangana delegation will leave for the upcoming Davos World Economic Forum (WEF) with an ambitious plan to attract more investments than last year.
The 2025 edition of the forum is scheduled to be held in the Swiss city from January 20 to January 25.
Speaking to The New Indian Express (TNIE), Sridhar Babu said, “We are planning our trip in such a way as to attract more investments than last time. At this point, I cannot mention any details or figures of the investments, but they will be more than what we received last time.”
In 2024, the Telangana government signed MoUs with several companies, securing investments worth Rs 40,000 crore. Prior to the Davos trip, the minister will be travelling to Singapore, along with Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy, to study tourism promotion practices in the city-state. “We will be visiting the skills university in Singapore, which is one of the best in terms of imparting skills,” he said.
Meanwhile, Sridhar Babu inaugurated the Global Innovation Hub (GIH) established by the Netherlands-based developer-first Ariqt at Raidurgam.
The firm plans to expand its workforce to over 300 engineers in Phase 1 at the new facility in Hyderabad. It provides AI-based solutions across industries such as fintech, agriculture, sports, cybersecurity, travel, and supply chain.
“A Netherlands-based company establishing a new office here for emerging technologies, which shall help global technologies in a big way, is possible because the company (Ariqt) has seen a beautiful and vibrant ecosystem in Hyderabad,” Sridhar Babu said.
Highlighting the transformative growth of the IT sector over the past two decades, Sridhar Babu noted that Telangana’s GDP and per capita income have now surpassed the national average.
He remarked that Telangana’s annual IT exports have reached an impressive $30 billion. “The state is home to over 6,000 startups and approximately 1,500 small and medium-sized software enterprises. Additionally, prominent global organisations are setting up Global Capability Centres (GCCs) here, further enriching the ecosystem. These advancements have created an abundance of employment opportunities for our talented youth,” he said.