Episode summary
Why India’s Big Tech Companies Are Betting on Hyderabad
Wall Street Week
· · 12 min
Summary
Hyderabad has built itself into a major Indian tech and life-sciences hub by combining office campuses, universities, and policy support. The city is still smaller than Bengaluru, but it has drawn multinational tenants such as Apple, JP Morgan, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and others into developments like Sattva Knowledge City, where global capability centers support worldwide operations from India. The argument is that Hyderabad’s rise was not accidental: government-backed cluster development helped create the engineering and managerial talent base that companies needed.
The city’s second growth engine is biosciences. Genome Valley has become a major pharmaceutical and vaccine cluster, and a guest says India should move from copying to innovating, with entrepreneurs and private owners driving the sector’s risk-taking. Hyderabad’s challenge is that much of its tech economy still depends on back-office, call-center, and IT support work that AI may pressure.
The guests argue, though, that AI is more a transition than a collapse. They expect demand for technology services, AI deployment, and new infrastructure to remain strong, with firms and workers reskilling as the work shifts from support roles toward more front-office and AI-native functions.
Key takeaways
- Hyderabad’s growth has been driven by deliberate policy choices that clustered institutions like IIIT and ISB to supply talent for multinationals and domestic demand.
- A guest says Hyderabad’s office market is far smaller than Bengaluru’s, but it has still become a major destination for global capability centers.
- Bharat Biotech’s chairman says Genome Valley shows how India can build an innovation ecosystem instead of “copying” existing models.
- AI threatens parts of India’s IT services base, including back-office and support work, but a guest argues companies are already pivoting toward AI deployment.
- Tech Mahindra’s strategy chief says the key response to AI is reskilling, and that India’s talent base is “learning ready.”
Notable quotes
“Hyderabad is racing to catch up with its rival of Bengaluru. It is known by some as Genome Valley in India because it is dominant in the life sciences”
“So a lot of them are what we call global capability centers. So these are basically offices, divisions, if you want to call it, of foreign companies mainly”
“-So if you look at the development of the tech ecosystem in Hyderabad, it was an outcome of very careful policy decisions by the government”
“India should not be copying anymore. India should innovate. For that, you need to create an ecosystem”
“-AI is moving so fast so that in 10 years, it's hard to, you know, really predict”
How the episode opens
Westin: This is a story about "bhavishyatu," that is a word meaning future in Telugu, the language spoken here in Hyderabad. Hyderabad is racing to catch up with its rival of Bengaluru. It is known by some as Genome Valley in India because it is dominant in the life sciences.
It also has attracted many multinational corporations from around the world, including American companies like Amazon and Meta and Apple. They occupy facilities such as these, which is Sattva Knowledge City. -Bangalore is a bigger market.
I mean, it's approaching 300 million square feet. Hyderabad is much smaller. It's like 160 million square feet.
So, you know, much smaller. But, but, I mean, a decade ago, Hyderabad was probably 50. Westin: Shirish Godbole is the CEO of Knowledge Realty Trust, India's largest office REIT.
We met him at Sattva Knowledge City in Hyderabad, one of the developments financed by Blackstone. It's a sprawling modern campus housing tenants such as Apple, JP Morgan and Microsoft. -It's the crown jewel of the Knowledge Realty Trust portfolio.
It's got 75,000 people working in all the buildings in and out. Westin: Who are the tenants? What are all those people doing?
-Yeah. Good question. So a lot of them are what we call global capability centers.
So these are basically offices, divisions, if you want to call it, of foreign companies mainly. And they are providing technological support in a variety of ways for their worldwide employees, enterprises. -I think part of what we did coming to India on the real estate side was rather than the old model, build it as inexpensively as possible.
Let's create a great environment where you can bicycle around and you've got a bunch of little shops you can go to and there are actually parks, and water, and it feels great to be there.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- hyderabad tech hub
- india outsourcing it work
- ai impact on it services
- talent and infrastructure
- life sciences hub
Watch the episode
Watch “Why India’s Big Tech Companies Are Betting on Hyderabad” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
More from Wall Street Week
-
Wall Street Week | Nvidia Shakeup, Midwest Stadium Bids, Care Work Gap, India’s Wedding Economy -
What American Manufacturers Are Telling the Fed about the Economy -
Europe’s Welfare State Faces a Reckoning -
How the Blue Wave Could Reshape America’s Economy -
Inside Alaska’s Oil Paradox -
Wall Street Week | Blue Wave Economic Impacts, European Welfare Woes
Wall Street Week, this episode and its artwork belong to Bloomberg. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
