IT’s official, Infy to set up shop in city TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Hyderabad: It’s official. IT bellwether Infosys is setting up its largest campus—for the time being—in Hyderabad. The 550 acre facility will straddle Mamidipalli and Kancha Imarat villages in Maheshwaram mandal near the upcoming Shamshabad international airport. The government is selling the land to Infosys at Rs 12 lakh per acre. In the first phase, the company will be given 150 acres and the remaining being delivered as the work progresses. The campus, similar to Infy’s Mysore sprawl, will house employee training and recreation activities apart from core facilities for IT services. With investment of Rs 1,250 crore in three phases, the Bangalore-based company will make the Shamshabad campus, its second in Hyderabad, its largest nationwide, even in terms of personnel employed. In 10 years, the campus will teem with about 25,000 employees.

    “This campus will be the next-generation Hyderabad Development Centre. We believe in the principle of underpromising and over-delivering. Whatever we have promised to do in the new campus, we will deliver,” Infosys’s chief mentor N R Narayana Murthy said at the signature ceremony as chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, IT minister Sabitha Indra Reddy and irrigation minister P Lakshmaiah beamed their happiness.

    Not making any direct reference to Infosys’ niggles with the Karnataka government, chief financial officer Mohandas Pai said, “We are built on the principle of being deserved to be treated with respect even if we disagree on certain issues. Hyderabad has offered us that respect and we have decided to come here.” Infosys already has a 50 acre, Rs 275 crore campus at Manikonda near Hi-Tec City which employs 5,200 professionals. According to Pai, the company will invest another Rs 225 crore on the existing facility and hire about 4,000 professionals by December. The Hyderabad centre has an export potential of about Rs 2,000 crore. In the last 12 months, it has clocked up Rs 850 crore, he said. He chose not to take Bangalore’s infrastructure to task at the signing ceremony.

    “We have a young leader (CM Kumaraswamy Gowda) in Bangalore. He is working very hard to make things happen and we should give him some time to deliver,” he said. While AP is claiming that the upcoming campus would be Infosys’s largest in the country, Karnataka is trying to top that by offering the company about 845 acres for yet another campus in Karnataka. However, reacting to this offer, Murthy said, “Actually, the government of Karnataka has been very, very kind to approve in principle our plan to buy land in Bangalore. We have not received any land from the (Karnataka) government so far. Here is a government (in AP) that has given us the land. There in Karnataka we have what is called a consent agreement, which means that we would have to buy the land from various people and that would be executed through the Karnataka Industrial Development Board. That will happen in the near future.” Where is 845 acres, asks Infosys IT Major Unenthused By Karnataka Govt Move By R Raghavendra/TNN

Bangalore: The champagne bottles need to wait a bit longer; may be it will have to be in the cold storage for a long time. Jubilation over Infosys getting 845 acres of land to expand in Bangalore looks premature.

    Infosys received a government order on Monday, directing the KIADB to acquire land on behalf of Infosys. If state government officials termed this as “the actual approval’’, Infy begged to differ. Sources at Infosys termed this only as an “in-principle’’ approval. Most importantly, this is the fifth time that Infosys has received such an approval since 2000.

    “There is no particular MoU or any specific land allotment that has been done yet. This is the fifth time we are receiving such a letter. There is no land with the Karnataka government to give us. The acquisition process has not started ever since we asked for land in 2000,’’ sources said.

    Sources added that people had wrongly interpreted this government order as the final clearance.

    Meanwhile, Infosys is all geared to attempt something unusual if this land is ever allotted to them. Infy will redefine the word “campus’’ by going in for a concept where its employees “live and work’’ within its premises. It will be a full fledged township for its employees.

    For an Infoscian, office will be a short walk from home, while their children could hop, skip and jump to reach school. It would also cater to the basic amenities of all Infoscians living there — with essential amenities like a school and a hospital, swimming pools, recreation centres, shopping malls and facilities. All these are being planned to avoid long commutes, the reason for much of Bangaloreans’ frustrations.

““Whatever we have promised to do, we will deliver INFOSYS CHIEF NARAYANA MURTHY


Infosys chief mentor N R Narayana Murthy and chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy on their way to signing the MoU at the company's campus in Hyderabad on Monday.