Telangana to boost IT expansion in small cities

Hyderabad: IT minister K.T. Rama Rao on Wednesday outlined his government’s priorities to put tier-2 cities in the state on the IT Map in addition to Hyderabad.

He said his department has brought out the Rural Technology Policy was this purpose and it is already paying dividends. “Results are being seen in Warangal, Nizamabad, Huzurabad, Jangaon and other places already. And we want more entrepreneurs from districts to make their mark in the IT world,” said the minister.
Mr Rama Rao was speaking at an event organised by HYSEA (Hyderabad Software Enterprises Association) to celebrate its silver jubilee year. He was the chief guest.

The minister hoped that HYSEA will also do its bit in taking the IT industry to smaller towns and wished that it will not be too long when Telangana Software Enterprises Association will come up along lines of HYSEA.

The IT minister pointed out that Hyderabad made giant strides in the Information Technology sector in the last 25 years and the growth story was delightful when compared to cities like Lucknow, as was mentioned by IT secretary Jayesh Ranjan.

“The big challenge before us today is to make the 80 crore million non-English speakers in the country digital literate so that they could they could connect with latest digital technologies with cashless transactions set to become order of the day. Associations like HYSEA can play a proactive role in assisting governments in this regard,” Mr Rama Rao said.

HYSEA felicitated 93-year old F.C. Kohli, who founded Tata Consultancy Services and is considered as the Father of Indian IT industry. In his speech, Mr Kohli called upon the software industry to take up social responsibility initiatives like making adult illiterates and non-English speaking population computer literate.