Telangana govt likely to offer land for Apple campus

Hyderabad: The presence of Apple's Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook in Hyderabad on Thursday for the launch of the company's first mapping development centre outside the US indicates its importance.

Cook will spend a considerable part of his day in the city on this programme. According to sources, Cook and his team will arrive in a private jet from Mumbai at 8.35 am and proceed to the Waverock Special Economic Zone (SEZ) facility.

The formal launch function is expected to start at 10 am. Cook would spend the next five hours here before leaving for Delhi at 3 pm, sources said.

Apple will have digitisation, related services and technical support of its map utility done from this centre.

"It is not just base mapping anymore. Geospatial solutions are extremely technology driven. Companies like Apple need a highly-talented engineering pool, which is abundantly available here," said B V R Mohan Reddy, former Nasscom chairman and executive chairman of Cyient.

Apple intends to scale up this facility quickly and could have around 4,000 software engineers eventually, according to reports.

Unconfirmed reports also suggested the company might consider setting up its own campus in the city. The Telangana government is also expected to make some announcement on allotment of land coinciding with the launch of Apple's facility on Thursday.

For now, Apple has leased space for the technology development centre in the Waverock SEZ owned by the American property development and consultancy firm Tishman Speyer in Gachibowli.

It also houses campuses of Microsoft and Infosys.

Apple refused to make the launch function an open event despite several attempts made by state government officials. An official said even Cook's arrival was not intimated to the authorities.

When Microsoft had decided to establish its first development centre outside the US in Hyderabad, the visit of the then Microsoft CEO Bill Gates created a lot of buzz. The present government hopes to replicate a similar buzz around the visit of Cook.

BITE OF R&D SPHERE

• Apple CEO Tim Cook to arrive at Hyderabad on a private plane at 8.30 am for the launch of its technology development centre
• Apple's facility will handle the Maps support and all the related services, including digitisation from India while the servers will be in the US
• It is investing about $25 mn on the tech centre and is expected to employ a large number of software engineers

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.