AP: NAIDU’S FINTECH VALLEY
The man who established Hyderabad as IT city is now looking to do a repeat with Fintech Valley in Visakhapatnam
Acentre of excellence for the global community,” is what N. Chandrababu Naidu is looking to create in Visakhapatnam. The Andhra Pradesh chief minister, who is keen to do one better than he did in establishing Hyderabad as a major information technology centre between 1995 and 2004, is now talking of blockchain, machine learning and artificial intelligence—“technologies of the future”, as he puts it.
Post-division in 2014, Naidu is now looking to create ‘Fintech Valley’ by developing an ecosystem focusing on education, innovation and research activities. It has already attracted investments of Rs 6,000 crore and created 5,500 jobs. Eleven companies are already in the process of moving in. They include Mastercard, the digital payments major, which is set to transform Vizag into the first near-cashless city in India. The New Jersey-based business processes entity, Conduent, which is opening its development centre in a couple of months, is to set up a 5,000seat facility, half of them in fintech, over the next three years. ICICI Bank and Mahindra Finance are setting up their fintech accelerators, each housing 30 start-ups funded by them.
Naidu’s IT advisor J.A. Chowdary reveals that several banking and financial majors including the Monetary Authority of Singapore have evinced interest in Fintech Valley. Lalit Ahuja’s ANSR Consulting, which also runs Kyron Global Accelerator, plans to de-
velop a Rs 500 crore centre that will offer 10,000 jobs in technology, analytics and core businesses over the next six years.
Naidu’s contention is that his is the most progressive state when it comes to adoption of technology, citing the example of Andhra accounting for 60 per cent of India’s Aadhaar usage as a benchmark. An added advantage is that he heads the chief minister’s committee on digital payments. This has enabled the state to join hands with the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry to form India’s first Fintech Forum to develop common standards and guidelines for fintech players. It will have bases in Mumbai and Visakhapatnam with the Andhra Pradesh Information Technology and Electronics Agency being the Fintech Forum’s nodal agency.
The state has set aside Rs 100 crore for innovation in blockchain and also hosted the first-ever conference on blockchain technology at Vizag on October 9-10. It’s also the first state to employ the e-governance technology through a pilot project in the road transport authority, and blockchain-based land registration in partnership with the Swedish start-up ChromaWay. There are plans to extend the tech to other departments, including making citizens’ data more secure.
“Blockchain technology is still in a nascent stage but has the promise of a great impact in the future,” says Pradeep Lankapalli, MD at Thomson Reuters (South Asia), which is partnering the state to build a world-class ecosystem for fintech and more efficient governance. Chief minister Naidu says his aim is to create 100,000 jobs and attract US $2 billion in investments to Fintech Valley.
FINTECH VALLEY HAS ALREADY ATTRACTED INVESTMENTS OF Rs 6,000 cr AND CREATED 5,500 JOBS
THE CHANGES HAVE SEEN TELANGANA’S GSDP GROW TO 10.1% IN 2016-17, AS AGAINST THE NATIONAL FIGURE OF 7.1
tial order in the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, which restricted employment of natives to districts clubbed as zones, has to be redefined now.
The district reorganisation has nevertheless spurred phenomenal growth in the state, besides making administration simpler. The government is installing infrastructure and rejigging programmes in keeping with the new district lines; the average distance to any district headquarter has been reduced to 60-70 km; 17 of the 31 districts have fewer than 1 million residents, which has enabled more effective implementation of government schemes and better law and order. Together, the changes saw Telangana’s GSDP grow to 10.1 per cent in 2016-17 as against the national figure of 7.1.
The chief minister claims it has also enabled his state to notch up the highest—21.7 per cent—rate of revenue growth in the country. “The two-way gain in reorganising districts is that people find it more convenient to approach government agencies while the state finds it more effective to implement welfare schemes because of the accessible administration,” says KCR.
Telangana chief secretary S.P. Singh points out that “among other gains is the advent of an invigorating work culture with a younger, [more] committed team of district collectors”. Small districts, he says, work well as there is better staff discipline, punctuality and easier access to highlevel officials for citizens.