Hyderabad facts |
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Hyderabad city is today known for its IT and IT Enabled Services, Pharmaceuticals and Entertainment industries(UTC) Many call centers, Business process outsourcing(BPO) firms, dealing with IT and other technological services were set up in the 1990s making it one of the major regions for call center setups in India.
The development of a township with state-of-the-art facilities called HITEC City, prompted several IT and ITES companies to setup operations in the city. An aggressive promotion of growth in this area has led civic boosters to call the city "Cyberabad". Hyderabad has also been referred to as the second Silicon Valley of India next to Bangalore. There have been extensive investments in digital infrastructure within the city promoting the setting up of several campuses by a vast array of companies within the city. This list includes several multinational corporations having established centres in the city. The major areas where such campuses have been setup include Madhapur and Gachibowli.
Hyderabad is more than 400 years old, but today the state capital of Andhra Pradesh is as famous for its burgeoning information technology and biotech research industries as it is for its minarets. Like Bangalore, this is one of India's fastest-growing cities (with a projected population of 7.5 million by 2015), but unlike most Indian cities, Hyderabad is actually getting greener and cleaner. A substantial part of the city is the suburb of Cyberabad, where Microsoft and Oracle are but two major players in the development known as Hi-Tech City, responsible for the city's economic upswing.
Despite its newfound attractiveness as a business destination, the city remains steeped in history, and you're just as likely to share the road with camels and bullock carts, and haggle alongside Muslim women covered from head to toe in black burkhas, as you are to converse with cellphone-wielding yuppies. There may not be much by way of specific sights to see in Hyderabad, but it's a pleasantly manageable city with a vibrant culture, excellent-value luxury hotels, and a heavenly cuisine -- perhaps the most enduring legacy of the decadent tastes and patronage of the cultured Nizams who first put the city on the map.
Rich Man, Poor Man--The Nizams of Hyderabad may have been ousted from power two generations ago, but their decadent tastes have only now been curtailed. Mukkaram Jah, grandson of the seventh and last Nizam of Hyderabad, is said to have inherited the richest fortune in the world when his grandfather died in 1967. Thirty-eight years later, he lives in Turkey, all but bankrupt, his wealth -- once said to have been worth around $750 million -- squandered by a lavish lifestyle (including four expensive divorces) or stuck in banks around the world pending the settlement of innumerable legal disputes and claims from hundreds of family members (real and fake) determined to get their pound of flesh.
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