HYDERABAD: With over Rs 3 lakh crore investments in the bag since Dec 2023, including Rs 1 lakh crore investments this year alone, Telangana has emerged as the numero uno state in the country in international and domestic investments, chief minister A Revanth Reddy said on Monday.“We are the number one state in India in investments, managing inflation, tax collection, creating jobs, in policy and law & order. We are doing India’s largest entrepreneur funding and monitoring programme empowering 66 lakh women through self help groups,” the CM said.

“During my trips to the World Economic Forum at Davos, and investor meets in the US, South Korea, Japan and Singapore we have convinced the world that Telangana means business,” Reddy said while inaugurating Sonata Software‘s new facility spread over 2 lakh sq ft with a capacity to accommodate around 2,000 techies.On critical infrastructure, he said Telangana is building a dry port and connecting it to seaports in Andhra Pradesh through a dedicated rail and road corridor. “We are building India’s most planned city within Hyderabad called Future City. An AI City will be part of it. We are building the Young India Skills University and Young India Sports University,” he said.IT & industries minister D Sridhar Babu said with AI becoming a buzz word, Telangana govt is coming up with an AI City in which companies like Microsoft have already evinced interest in setting up facilities.He said by June-July this year, the Telangana govt is also coming up with an AI University aimed at skilling and reskilling talent as part of plans to make the state and Hyderabad a hub for global value centres and not just global capability centres as it is no longer about low labour cost arbitrage. “We have to create value here and try to sell our products abroad instead of just doing back end work for companies,” he said.Sami Dhir, managing director & CEO of Sonata Software, said the Bengaluru headquartered modernisation engineering company plans to ramp up its Hyderabad headcount to over 5,000 techies over the next three to five years. He said the teams at the Hyderabad facility will focus on building capabilities around technologies such as AI, Data and Cloud.Sonata Software, which has a global headcount of around 7,000, houses around 2,000 techies in Hyderabad and 3,500 techies in Bengaluru in addition to other centres like Chennai. “We have ramped up our presence in Hyderabad from around 700 to around 2,000 over the past few months and are open to acquiring more space to increase the numbers to 5,000 in three to five years,” Dhir said.