'Invest in Tier-II cities'

Invest in Tier-II and Tier-III cities like Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Tirupati, Warangal and Kakinada as they hold good potential for growth, besides promising significant cost advantage, experts urged IT companies. “For instance, Visakhapatnam offers office space at '20-25 per sft, while it is '15-20 in Vijayawada. Besides, these emerging hubs of the IT industry are home to a lot of talent, which companies can unlock,” P Venugopal, director, Software Technology Parks of India, Hyderabad, said during a panel discussion on ‘Government policies – leveraging IT’ at the two-day Advantage AP, an annual IT summit that kicked off here on Tuesday. Venugopal said around 105 IT companies were currently operating out of Vizag, employing close to 12,000 professional. “The port city has 20 engineering colleges with an annual student intake of 10,000. With small IT players finding it expensive to run businesses from cities like Hyderabad and Bangalore, they should look at these Tier-II and Tier-III cities to set up shop,”he added.