After Infy, Wipro comes calling

Happening Hyderabad is drawing in another big name. After Infosys plumped for Hyderabad to locate its biggest campus in the country, Aziz Premji is following suit. Now, Wipro is also planning to locate one of its biggest campus in the city. The company has a 30-acre campus in Hyderabad city where it employs 2,000 professionals. While Wipro has invested Rs 200 crore on the existing campus, the plan is to ramp up the head count to 5,000 in the near future.

The proposed campus would be spread over about 300 acres. Apart from this, the company wants to set up a campus in Visakhapatnam in about 50 acres.

Wipro will invest about Rs 750 crore on the proposed campus in Hyderabad and another Rs 200 crore in Visakhapatnam. The city campus is expected to provide employment to 15,000 professionals while the Vizag centre will accommodate 13,500 employees. Wipro already has a significant presence in AP. It is the second largest IT exporter from the state with exports worth Rs 970 crore in 2004-05.

Though the company has sought land on different occasions in bits and pieces, all put together it would be a major employer and exporter from the state.

While Wipro’s plans for expansion in the state are definitely good news for the industry, this is likely to make life a trifle difficult for government officials. Land around Hyderabad is difficult to come by, with more and more companies pitching in to set up their units in the city. The only option might be to move the units to the northern end of the city, along the Karimnagar highway.