Analysis: HITEC City: The IT community of tomorrow?

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by Tom Field and Cheryl Bentsen

Hyderabad, India (IDG) -- The boys in the bandh got their wish. The State of Andhra Pradesh was effectively closed last Wednesday, the day following the bloody political protest downtown. Shops, business offices, gas stations, movie theaters and schools statewide heeded the plea from opposition party leaders to respect yesterday's hastily-called civil shutdown in honor of the four protesters slain in last Monday's deadly riot. And although the day-long bandh was mostly peaceful, 1,500 activists were arrested either for stopping traffic, forcing businesses to remain closed, or for damaging one of the 40 public buses that were vandalized during the course of the day.

All in all, just another restless day of growing pains for the burgeoning cyber city.

Meanwhile, in my one bandh-defying foray outside of the hotel gate, I visited HITEC City, Hyderabad's work-in-progress IT enclave. More accurately, theme park is the description that comes to mind.

The Hyderabad Information Technology Engineering Consultancy City (HITEC City) is a state-of-the-art techno township being built, marketed and maintained by L&T Infocity Ltd., a joint venture of Indian engineering giant Larsen & Toubro Limited (which owns 89 percent of the project) and the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation Limited (which owns the remaining 11 percent). Constructed on 151 acres of land and at a cost of about $375 million, HITEC City is a self-reliant business park designed to leverage Hyderabad's advantages IT training and manpower while offsetting its main disadvantage unstable infrastructure. When completed in 2002, HITEC City will include:

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  • Cyber Towers, a 580,000 sq. ft. office park that houses its own banks, restaurant, travel agency, shops, power and water supply; Cyber Gateway, an 866,000 sq. ft. arched office space that will feature a glass faade, landscaped interior gardens, and again its own power supply as well as fibre optic Internet connectivity;

  • Many undeveloped plots of land upon which business may build their own structures and still benefit from HITEC City's independent infrastructure;

  • A residential area in which HITEC City employees may live in relative luxury;

  • A hotel and convention center;

  • A golf course, club house, medical center, gas station, fire house, nursery and shops tending to almost any material need. In short, once you get to HITEC City, you'll really never have a reason to leave.

Phase one of HITEC City, the Cyber Towers, is up and running, and it is impressive. Opened in November 1998, this office park was 100 percent occupied just 14 months later. Today, such major corporate names as Microsoft, Oracle and GE Capital operate offshore development facilities or call centers in this four-quadrant, 10-story tower. Some of these tenants have already booked expansion space in Phase two, the currently under-construction Cyber Gateway.

To local officials and developers, HITEC City is a cause for celebration on behalf of the state's growing IT industry.

However to me, HITEC City is reminiscent of Celebration, the planned community spawned at Walt Disney World in Florida. Celebration is Disney's version of the all-American city complete with its own residential housing, shops, healthcare and government.

Many of us can't imagine living in Celebration. It would be like the final surrender to the ever-expanding commercial giant that already has its controlling stamp upon our cinemas, televisions even our babies' diapers.

Whom among us wants to live at our offices (more than we already do)? That's what I wonder when I see the ambitions for HITEC City. Literally, one will be able to eat, sleep, work, play, bank, shop and golf there. Unless one has school-aged children, there will be virtually no need to ever leave HITEC City and who knows, maybe the schools will come next?

Is this the model of the high-tech office park of the future? And whose needs does it serve? Right now I see HITEC City attracting mainly offshore tenants. While these companies are creating jobs aplenty for locals, certainly the residential housing isn't intended for them because they already have homes and families. If these homes ultimately are filled with foreign workers who have no need to venture out into the greater Hyderabad community, then is this ambitious project really bringing the region maximum return on its investment?

And HITEC City isn't alone. I just returned from a trip to the Satyam Technology Centre, which is building its own self-sustainable corporate/residential facility some 20 kilometers out of Hyderabad. "Once people are here, they're away from all the problems of the city," one Satyam executive told me.

But are enclaves such as HITEC City and Satyam Technology Centre sustainable as business models? That's the open question.

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