Minister for IT and Industries D. Sridhar Babu presenting HYSEA Lifetime Achievement Award to LVPEI founder Gullapalli Nageswara Rao.  
| Photo Credit: Arrangement

Telangana is pursuing a bold vision to emerge as a technology powerhouse and top exporter of IT products and services from the country, Minister for IT and Industries D. Sridhar Babu said on Tuesday (February 11).

“Our vision is bold and ambitions boundless,” he told the 32nd annual conference and awards programme of Hyderabad Software Enterprises Association (HYSEA) with ‘AI & Beyond: Redefining the Future’ as its theme. Seeking to highlight how the State is well positioned to scale up as a global technology development hub, the Minister said Hyderabad is already one of the fast growing hubs for global capability centres (GCCs).

The city is home to about 1,500 tech firms, 1.5 million IT professionals, including 300,000 AI engineers and 100,000 chip designers. There are 6,000 odd startups in Hyderabad. Telangana’s IT exports were around $32 billion and growing at a rate of around 13%. With an $186 billion GDP, Telangana has set its sights on becoming a $1 trillion economy in the next decade, accelerating its growth from 12% to 18%, and blazing a trail in AI, semiconductors, defence technology and deep-tech innovation.

Drawing the contours of future growth, Mr.Sridhar Babu said the focus should be on a shift to a more value driven and innovation led growth from one based on cost arbitrage. The global capability centres should turn into global value centres, he said, adding Hyderabad hosts GCC of companies across industries from pharma, BFSI, semiconductors to hospitality.

On Artificial Intelligence, the Minister said AI is no longer an emerging technology but come to reshape economies, industries as well as governance. With 3 lakh AI engineers, Telangana is contributing to development of next generation of AI driven products.

Minister for IT and Industries D. Sridhar Babu presenting HYSEA Lifetime Achievement Award to Institute Professor, IIT Madras Ashok Jhunjhunwala.    
| Photo Credit:
Arrangement

The HYSEA lifetime achievement awards were presented to LVPEI founder Gullapalli Nageswara Rao and Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Institute Professor at IIT Madras. The HYSEA 10x Product Awards were presented to 10 startups from Telangana.