Bengal biz houses take a liking to Telangana, says minister

Several prominet business groups based in Wesr Bengal have shown interest in making investments in Telangana, the southern state's IT and industries minister K T Rama Rao claimed today.
"We had discussions with some of the major business houses of the state regarding their intent for making investments in Telangana," K T Rama Rao, minister for IT, commerce and industry, told reporters here.
He said business houses like RP-Sanjiv Goenka group, Emami, Srei and Keventer held discussions with him on it.
While Sanjiv Goenka discussed the possibility of setting up a packaged foods unit, Emami's joint chairman R S Goenka talked of cement, bio-fuel and FMCG facilities and the Kanorias of Srei discussed infrastructure financing prospects.

"We intended to meet these groups as they were expanding beyond West Bengal. It is our duty to attract outbound investments from other states into Telangana," he said on the sidelines of a CII event here today.
He sad that since the formation of Telangana three years ago, the state had attracted global names like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Uber, SalesForce, Honeywell, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, among others.

The state is also developing the second phase of startup-ecosystem -- T-Hub -- covering an area of 3.5 lakh square feet, he said.
The landlocked Telangana is also planning to set up a dry dock with customs clearing facilities bear Hyderabad on PPP route for which an EoI has already been floated, he said.

Automobile major Ashok leyland had also shwon interest in setting up a bus manufacturing unit in the state.
IT revenues from the state in the last fiscal was Rs 87,000 crore, he said.