Franklin Templeton gets 40 acres to set up tech campus in Vizag

Andhra govt has also extended financial support for a 10,000 sq ft incubation unit by promising a monthly rent of Rs 390,000 for 2 years

Global investment firm Franklin Templeton Investments (FTI) is setting up a large technology development campus in the port city of Visakhapatnam along with its affiliate, Innova Solutions Inc., on a 40-acre plot facing the sea.

Acting on a detailed proposal given last month by the US firm, Andhra Pradesh government has allotted 25 acres to FTI and 15 acres to Innova on Rishikonda, now home to Fintech Valley, besides extending other incentives through orders issued earlier this week.

Besides offering land at a concessional rate, the state government has extended financial support for a proposed 10,000-square feet incubation facility of the US firm by promising a monthly rent of Rs 390,000 for a period of two years with an option of two extensions of 18 months each in a ready-built office space at Rishikonda.

During his visit to the US in May, 2017 Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu met Franklin Templeton president and chief operating officer Jennifer Johnson and invited the company to set up a campus in Vizag.

With Hyderabad becoming an integral part of Telangana following the bifurcation of this Telugu speaking state, the Naidu government has been making all-out efforts to create a new hub of global IT and fintech offshore centres in Vizag and Amaravati by offering liberal incentives to these companies.

FTI is among the top global financial services firms that had moved a part of their offshore technology support and back-office operations to India during the last decade to tap the local engineering talent while expanding their investment business in the Indian market. It had opened its technology campus at Hyderabad financial district in a 15-acre plot way back in 2007.

AP government pitched for FTI's second campus citing a large contribution of Telugu states to the pool of Indian software and engineering talent as the company was looking at the availability of high-end talent in artificial intelligence, data analytics and processing as a prerequisite for the second location.

The firm has promised to create around 2,500 high-end IT jobs while proposing to invest as much as $70 million in the upcoming Vizag campus.

Though the government was able to attract a group of IT and fintech players to the port city, Franklin Templeton's presence is expected to give a further boost to its efforts to bring more companies to this place.

The state government has allotted land at a concessional rate of Rs 3.25 million per acre for this campus besides allowing 30 per cent of an area for the development of social and commercial infrastructure under its IT policy 2017-2020.