Infosys to get 20 acres in Visakha for permanent facility ala Cognizant, TCS?

The efforts to position Visakhapatnam as a prominent IT hub seems to be bearing fruit with the buzz that Infosys is in an advanced stage of negotiations to get 20 acres under "One Acre Per Rupee' Policy introduced by the Andhra Pradesh Government.

The speculation was triggered after IT and Electronics Minister Nara Lokesh took to his X handle to say "#Vizag. Get ready. The world champions are coming this month. Any guesses who?'

Infosys, the IT giant has a small presence in the city after launching a facility at a rented premises a few years ago. Since then there has been speculation that they may set up a permanent development centre. Informed sources say the government is ready to allot 20 to Infosys at Yendada provided it fulfils the employment condition stipulated by the government. "The policy is first of its kind to woo major investments into the State," AP Chambers of Commerce president Potluri Bhaskara Rao told Bizz Buzz.

If Infosys sets up a campus in Visakhapatnam, it will have permanent facilities in all the South Indian States. The government has already allotted land to nearly 40 acres TCS and Cognizant for a combined investment of Rs.20,000 crore in the city. While Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and IT and Electronics Minister Nara Lokesh recently performed bhoomi pooja for the permanent campus for Cognizant, TCS is getting ready to launch temporary operations from Millennium Tower. Cognizant started its operations during the visit of Naidu and Lokesh from a rented building at Rushikonda Hills. Both the IT companies will provide a total employment of 20,000.

Earlier, Accenture, another IT major, had sought 10 acres at concessional rate to develop its campus in the city. In addition to this, Google has announced USD15 billion investment on a AI-centred data center hub. Google through MoU signed in October partnered with AdaniConneX and Airtel to create a huge digital infrastructure including new subsea cable connections to power AI for India.

There are also reports that TCS is interested in establishing a one gigawatt data center in the city. Reliance Industries through its partners has signed MoU for setting up a one GW data center with an investment of Rs.1 lakh crore. Meta, which wants to make Visakhapatnam a landing centre for its inter-continental subsea cable project along with Mumbai, has engaged Sify as its local partner. Sify has already started work on its 500 MW hyperscale data center at Paradesipalem with an investment of Rs.15,266 crore. The subsea cable project named 'Waterworth' will boost global connectivity.