Intel VP in Hyd

Arvind Sodhani, senior vice-president of Intel Corporation and president of Intel Capital, the company's strategic investment arm that directs the company's external investments, mergers and acquisitions, is in Hyderabad.

Though the purpose of his visit is not immediately known, Arvind is said to have visited a few places including the Indian School of Business (ISB) besides meeting a couple of big names in the IT industry based out of Hyderbad.

According to sources, representatives of the state government also met him on Thursday night to impress upon him to consider Hyderabad as a possible location for Intel's proposed Fab Testing facility project.

As recent reports suggest, Union IT Minister Kalanidhi Maran is keen to bring this project to his home state, Tamil Nadu, even as the company is said to be still in the process of evaluating the places.

Though Intel has a big chip design wing located in Bangalore, the company is looking for other places other than the IT capital of India on account of infrastructural bottlenecks being faced by the city.

The state government is trying to include Hyderabad on the list of possible locations for setting up of Intel testing facility for quite sometime but so far has met with little success.

A high-level team from the state, which recently toured United States to meet big companies to invite them to Andhra Pradesh, had to cancel a meeting with Intel president following the advice of Indian ambassador who cited the company's negotiations with the Government of India as the reason, according to officials.

Though officials are not very hopeful of Intel's plans, Arvind's visit still assumes significance for other reasons too.

June Min, promoter of the proposed Fab facility in Hyderabad, is also in talks with Intel to join his project. This could also be one of the possible reasons for Arvind's visit to Hyderabad. He is said to be accompanied by the company's team.