Facebook India operaions soon in Raheja Mindspace SEZ in Hyderabad

News Posted - 2010-09-01, Last Updated - 2010-09-01

HYDERABAD: Facebook will set up its office in the Raheja Mindspace special economic zone, though it will launch its incubator facility first in about a couple of months.

A State Government communique said that the Union Government accorded approval to the social networking site's proposal for space in an SEZ.

The company was hiring people, especially in the marketing wing. The operations from the incubator would be regularised eventually.

Facebook’s new operations center in the city will complement the work done at its headquarters at Palo Alto, California, Dublin, Ireland and a recently announced location in Austin, Texas. The Hyderabad office will be the first office of Facebook in Asia.

The Union Government accorded sanction for five IT companies to set up their offices in an area of 3.91 lakh sq. ft in different IT SEZs in the Sate. The other prominent MNCs include Accenture, and Invesco(expansion).

Sources said Facebook was allotted about 50,000 sq. ft space and was going to recruit close to 500 people to run their operations. Facebook has about eight million subscribers in India and is said to be investing US $ 150 million initially. The social networking site has more than 400 million active users worldwide.

The provisional performance of IT sector in the State during 2010 has been quite encouraging, according to Principal Secretary K. Ratna Prabha, who heads the ICT department in the State Government.

During the year, new IT MNC like JP Morgan, United Health Group had come forward to set up their operations. Existing companies like Cognizant Technology Services, TCS, Infosys, Invesco, were significantly expanding their operations.

The IT companies began their annual recruitment and hiring plans. Further, she said that the recession did not have any impact on the creation and filling of office space in IT SEZs by the infrastructure developers. In fact during the recent past, infrastructure providers like Raheja and Divyasree, closed space booking deals of more than 32 lakh sq. ft of office space with renowned IT companies.

While the growth of IT was restricted to Hyderabad, now it was spreading to tier-II cities like Warangal, Visakhapatnam, Kakinada, Vijayawada, and Tirupati.

Vijayawada was being preferred as an alternative Tier-II IT location in view of its strategic location. Vijayawada – not only offers cost advantage in terms of physical infrastructure, hiring of human resources and social costs, but also provides a safe place and secure working environment.

Visualizing the potential of Vijayawada as a promising IT location, the IT companies were setting up and expanding their operations in Vijayawada.

An IT SEZ in an area of 30 acres with 2 lakh sq. ft was developed in Vijayawada by APIIC in association with L&T Info City and was ready for occupation.

The Development Commissioner, IT SEZ, sanctioned spaces in the Vijayawada SEZ to Tektraks (2,350 sq. ft); Exranet Software Solutions (5,011); Indemax (4,895 sq. ft) and Galla IT Services (1,050 sq. ft). Source: andhrabusiness.com 27/6/10