Hyderabad: Telangana Industries and IT minister KT Rama Rao inaugurated the 50-acre FICCI FLO Industrial park today on the occasion of women’s day.
Recognising it as the first industrial park in the country that is fully owned and led by women, Rama Rao urged women entrepreneurs to dive into areas that have the potential for large scale employment and value creation, like emerging technologies, aerospace and defence instead of only focusing on the small trades that are conventionally regarded as fit for women.
Udyamika, a new industrial wing, was also unveiled by the Minister. He said that it would offer women entrepreneurs a window to voice their grievances, and end-to-end support as well as a committee to review and process the incentives will be available along with a corpus fund to facilitate ease of doing business.
The FICCI-FLO Industrial Park has been allotted 25 entrepreneurs and the projects of about 5 of them are currently underway. Rama Rao urged the rest of the entrepreneurs to begin working on their projects to kick off the job creation. He added that today, Hyderabad is a key contributor in the pharma section, after having supplied one-third of the vaccines used globally.
“There cannot be any reason for not thinking big or venturing into new areas. You should think of changing the world,” he asserted. He continued to say that Telangana has been supporting women entrepreneurs and will continue to do so, with ten percent of each industrial park in the city designated for women-led enterprises.
Since the Telangana state formation in 2014, the GSDP of the state has grown from 4.9 lakh crores to 11.5 lakh crores, recording 130 percent growth in less than eight years. The State is the fourth largest contributor to the GDP and with about four crore population contributes five per cent to the GDP.
KTR further urged women entrepreneurs to avail the services of We-Hub, India’s first and only State led incubator to promote and foster women’s entrepreneurship by incubation, access to the Government and creating a global collaborative network for women-led enterprises to thrive. He added that We-Hub has worked with more than 5,000 entrepreneurs and incubated about 150 startups and helped raise more than Rs 65 crore in funding.
FLO Hyderabad Chairperson Uma Chigurupati stated that the new industrial park will have 25 women owned manufacturing industries. With an investment of Rs 250 crore, it is set to generate employment to about 2,000 people. Electronics, packaging, furniture, general engineering, food processing, medical devices, jewellery, nutraceuticals and auto parts units will come here.