E-Dreams Die Hard

Says APFIRST CEO Randeep Sudan: "We’ll not only proactively market the value proposition of the state but we will also go out and develop and execute it by providing training to create skilled manpower, building infrastructure, passing enabling regulations and building a responsive single-point government interface."

An IT company interested in investing in Andhra Pradesh can now e-mail its application to APFIRST, which will then liaise with all the different government departments. For developing infrastructure, APFIRST has signed an MoU to develop 120 acres of land in the HiTec City area to build up some 4 million square feet of state-of-the-art office space costing Rs 600 crore.

The sceptics notwithstanding, there is some encouraging news for the beleaguered IT industry in the NASSCOM-McKinsey report recently released in Hyderabad. The reports paints an optimistic picture and predicts that India will earn $50 billion from global IT exports by 2008. Comforting words for Naidu who prided himself as the first e-friendly chief minister.