 "Hyderabad set to bite Apple")
This would be the iPhone maker's first innovation and technology development facility outside its headquarters in Cupertino, California. In India, this would be Apple's second coming: the company shut down its tech support in Bengaluru in 2006. A senior Telangana government officer confirmed this development, and said the state was in talks with the company for some time now.
Sources said Hyderabad had been chosen after a thorough search, and it had emerged as a winner, like it did in the 1990s when Microsoft chose it to set up a software campus - the first outside the US. For the Telangana government, this is a big breakthrough in raising the profile of Hyderabad as a preferred information technology (IT) destination.
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Last year, Google Inc. had signed a memorandum of understanding to set up its own campus on a seven-acre plot handed over by the government.
Apple is expected to take up 250,000 square feet office space in the Waverock IT towers, owned by US real estate development and consultancy firm Tishman Speyer in Gachibowli. The area, about 26 km west of the city, is also home to the offices of multinational and domestic IT and software development companies. A notified IT special economic zone, Waverock is spread over 1.5-million square feet. It was developed in two phases, in 2010 and 2014.
"Apple, as well as Tishman Speyer, would come out with a statement once the ongoing negotiations concluded," the official told Business Standard.
Hyderabad, with its well-developed infrastructure and lower property prices, began attracting the companies, after a prolonged political turmoil ended with bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in June 2014.
Amazon, IKEA, Flipkart and others have already selected the city to build their facilities in the past year and a half. Knight and Frank, in a recent report, noted in the second half of 2015, office space absorption had doubled to 3.2 million square feet in Hyderabad, as compared to 1.5 million square feet in the first half.
Apple Computer is likely to set up a technology development centre in Hyderabad by July:
Location: Waverock IT towers, a special economic zone in Hyderabad
Space: About 250,000 sq ft
No. of employees: About 4,500 engineers
Focus: Apple Map
What it does for Hyderabad
- Raises the profile of the city as an IT destination: at present, it is second after Bengaluru
- Google has leased seven-acre office space at Gachibowli