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Amazon Sets Up Its Biggest Global Office In Hyderabad

Amazon Sets Up Its Biggest Global Office In Hyderabad

Hyderabad is the chosen destination of e-commerce giant Amazon to set up its biggest global office campus, and only the second one that it owns.

The impressive building built on a 10-acre campus came up in a record three years.

Though Amazon first came to Hyderabad in 2004, it was in 2016, after the new state of Telangana was formed, that the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government managed to convince Amazon to choose Hyderabad over Bengaluru.

"We have over 60,000 employees in India and a third of them are located in Telangana," Amit Agarwal, senior vice president and country manager, Amazon, said during the formal opening of the building on Wednesday.

Telangana's principal secretary, Jayesh Ranjan, is optimistic that the number would grow from the present 15,000 in Hyderabad to over 20,000. "Even the 10-acre campus may fall short given Amazon's growth plans," he said. "What's heartening is that they decided to buy the land and build their campus which means their relationship with Hyderabad is permanent."

John Schoettler, director of global real estate and facilities, Amazon, said: "We have made investments for kindle, prime video these are supporting many creators, actors, producers, writers to their stories. We have Alexa, a very popular voice assistant device in India."

"In the last six years, Amazon has become the largest market in India with largest selection of 200 million items and it is most visited and most trusted marketplace for last few years,"Mr Agarwal said.

"If we look at Amazon many investments created and fundamentally changing lives in India. We have launched 50 warehouses in India that occupied 25 million cubic feet of space. It's the largest storage buildout in this country for e-commerce. We have two lakh employees through logistics, warehousing, delivery stations and partner associations to serve customers every day."

"We are very excited that we have created thousands of jobs in the last six years. We are on track to cross exports worth $5 billions in next three years. Amazon is influencing make in India to go global in a scalable manner,'' he said, presenting a bullish outlook.

In addition to the built-up area of 30 lakh square feet, the building boasts of state-of-art mechanical and lighting systems. There is an 80,050-litre water recycling plant on the site in addition to more than 300 plants. That includes 200-year-old trees translocated to the campus. The building contains two and half times more steel than Eiffel Tower.

For Hyderabad, the big ticket entry of a global tech giant happened with Microsoft in 1998. After that, Facebook, Google and others built a base here. Flipkart, which was recently acquired by Walmart, has it biggest warehouse globally in Hyderabad. More recently, Swedish retail giant Ikea also opened its first Indian outlet in Hyderabad, which is built over an area of 4,00,000 square feet.

"This will send the right market signals. Just like when Microsoft came, others realised what Hyderabad can offer. Similarly, Amazon investing in its biggest campus here is an endorsement for Telangana's industry-friendly policies," Mr Ranjan said.