The Telangana government plans to establish the "country's largest" incubator for start-ups and make entire Hyderabad Wi-Fi enabled, as it seeks to shrug off the slowdown in the information technology sector.
Telangana Information Technology Minister K T Rama Rao said that the incubator would be set up in collaboration with institutions like the Hyderabad-based International Institute of Information Technology and Indian School of Business, besides technology partners from the industry.
"We are creating the country's biggest incubator facility where new ideas, innovations, research and development will be nurtured and nourished. We will create an environment where the government will even look at the possibility of providing seed capital as well," Rao told PTI here.
He said that he is also actively examining a proposal to make Hyderabad a fully wi-fi enabled city to ensure that common man and information technology companies benefit.
"These two ambitious goals (incubator and wi-fi initiative) shall be pursued in the next six months," he said.
Without referring to pro-Telangana statehood agitations, Rao admitted that investment climate had slowed down in recent years and government initiatives are now needed to boost investor sentiment.
"At this point, the ecosystem here needs a further push from the government. Last five years saw a slowdown in the general investment environment," he said.
Rao said that he is meeting existing investors in Hyderabad to ensure that they expand operations in the city and focus on increasing infotech exports.
The minister said that he is also talking to small, medium and big companies to encourage them to be back in what he called "big time action".
He said that the Telangana government intends to formulate infotech and industry policies with inputs from industry and already had a dialogue with National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) and Confederation of Indian Industries (CII).
A single window clearance cell would be formed, attached to the Telangana Chief Minister's office to ensure that all investment proposals are cleared at a single point, he said.
Rao, who also holds the Panchayati Raj portfolio, said the Telangana government plans to put in place a grievance redressal mechanism in every mandal. Under the planned three-tier structure mechanism, whatever issues do not get resolved in around 20 days would be directly reviewed by the Telangana Chief Minister.
The Telangana state government is also working on an electronic panchayat proposal through which basic services such as community, death, income and land records certificates would be issued at the panchayat level itself, so that people need not travel several kilometres and go to mandal or block offices to get such certificates, he said.
