Make no mistake. This is no Charles Dickens’ story; neither it retells the twisty 2024 Bollywood flick; this is rather a story of two Telugu States from South India who have launched super ambitious initiatives that only rival each other, with their stakes and promises.
While the 19th century British novelist depicted a contrast of sorts between London and Paris, this story is about (contrastingly) high tech future that the cities of Hyderabad in Telangana, and Vishakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh want to journey, apparently paved by AI.
The one is an aptly named Future City, while the other in Vizag (other name for Visakha) is India AI Hub. SIA presents a snappy account on the ambitious tech mapping tale of two cities.
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The Story of One AI City – Tarluvada, Vizag
On 28 of April, (last month), at Tarluvada, a very picturesquely lush green and serene village – some 40 km north of Visakhapatnam city centre in Andhra Pradesh – an event happened that turned otherwise quiet countryside into a cynosure of global technology world attention.
For, the 2500-odd population hamlet had suddenly acquired the celebrated status of siting the ground-breaking ceremony for India’s first gigawatt-scale, national AI-powered industrial ecosystem to shape Vikasit Bharat by 2047.
The event – though – had a much fanfare-coloured ceremony with some of the most high-profile dignitaries descending on the site for the big technomic thing.
They included Laura Williams, U.S. Consulate General; Thomas Kurian, CEO, Google Cloud; Bikash Koley, Vice-President of Google Global Infrastructure, Google Cloud; Ashwini Vaishnaw, IT Minister, Government of India; N. Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh; Nara Lokesh, Minister for HRD, ITC&E and RTG, Government of Andhra Pradesh; Jeet Adani, Director-Adani Group; Karan Adani, Managing Director of Adani Ports & SEZ Gopal Vittal, and Executive Vice-Chairman, Bharti Airtel.
The cornerstone of the supposed gigantic project is the India AI Hub, launched by Google in tune with its ambitious US$15 billion (>₹1.41 lakh crore) investment – its largest billing in India till date – for a five-year roadmap from 2026-2030.
Planned in strategic partnership with AdaniConneX (a hyperscale data centre service provider division of India’s largest private infrastructure behemoth Adani Group); and Nxtra by Airtel India’s largest private sector telecom provider), the AI Hub – fondly hailed as AI City of India – is being developed over 600 acres of land of the village, with three large data centre campuses together making for a 1-gigawatt facility, which are, in turn, expandable to 2-gigawatt capacity.
The mega project is significant in more ways than one. Consider this:
- It will be Google’s largest AI hub in Asia, and also the largest AI facility outside the US
- It will develop a new international subsea gateway from the US to India through a America-India Connect initiative of fiber-optic network
- Beyond cloud infrastructure, the facility engages in AI research, AI compute (GPU/TPU), making it the key AI hub for South Asia
- It will create anywhere between 5000 and 6000 high-performance technology jobs directly, and some 30,000 approx jobs indirectly (some reports claim creating as many as close to two lakh jobs)
- Through this workforce, the AI Hub aims at delivering high-performance, low-latency services that businesses and organizations need to build and scale their own AI-powered solutions, accelerate R&D
As an expansion of job creating initiative in the hub, Google will introduce Skills Trade and Readiness (STAR) programme to create sustainable career paths for local talent while developing a home grown workforce ready to drive India’s AI Literacy Mission en route to digital acceleration.
In tandem, IT behemoth is also partnering with Chennai-headquartered ICT Academy to train 1,200+ local students and educators to gain access to specialized tracks in cloud computing and generative AI.
The eventual objective is to help India secure its place as a global leader in the AI-powered future.
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As part of the whole initiative, imagine how many meeting rooms, boardrooms, huddle rooms, training rooms, collaboration spaces, NOCs, and more…how vast are the stakes for the AV world… |
The Story of the Other Future City – Mucherla, Hyderabad
Even as the grand plans for the AI City of India were shaping to break ground at Vizag, just two days before it happened, i.e. on 26 April, an equally, if not more, ambitious initiative broke ground near Hyderabad, the capital of Telangana.
The Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy laid the Foundation Stone for building Future City Police Commissionerate near Meerkhanpet village, some 38 km from Hyderabad, and 30 km from Shamshabad international airport.
The event, while comparatively smaller than the one at Vizag AI City, is in reality part of a much much bigger initiative called Bharat Future City that had its ground breaking ceremony last last year.
Claimed to be India’s first net-zero greenfield Smart City, envisioned as a model for sustainable urban development powered by technological innovation- the Future City is hyped to rival global cities of Seoul, Singapore, Tokyo, and New York in terms of AI-centric use of advanced technology, for business and living.
To be developed at Mucherla – an otherwise ordinary village but for a potentially high real estate value (owing to its proximity to happening Hyderabad) – the Future City vision spreads over an overwhelmingly large 30,000 acres of land, and stands at an overall outlay of nearly ₹one lakh crore, with AI-centric technology as its backbone.
Consider this:
- A dedicated AI City serving as special zone for R&D in AI
- A 100 MW AI-ready Data Centre to be set-up by UPC Volt, a joint-venture between two Dutch AI solutions providers UPC Renewables Group and VOLT Data Centers (an MoU was signed during a meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos recently)
- AI Centre of Excellence to be set up in partnership with Australia’s Deakin University focusing on advanced skilling, research, and industry applications, which will operate within the planned AI University of the Future City
- AI-centric Young India SKills University and National Academy of Construction to come up
Besides AI, the Future City will also have speciality zones for life sciences, fintech, and Smart Technology domains- all powered by AI-centric technology solutions.
The State Government has set up a dedicated administrative body called the Future City Development Authority last year. Construction of its office went underway simultaneously, and it is slated for inauguration shortly.
| Now, again, while the completion of all the proposed/publicized projects is subject to a variety of factors, the immensity of prospects for AV is imaginable-NoCs and Command Control Rooms, video surveillance, conferencing and collaboration spaces, and meeting rooms besides many others. |
So, a tale of two cities in India for AV prospects is as exciting as it can get.
