Welspun to Invest Rs 5,000 Crore in Telangana

Welspun on Thursday announced plans to investment about Rs 5,000 crore in Telangana in phases over five years across segments, including an IT and ITES cluster and a logistics park. This would provide about 50,000 jobs including 20,000 directly and 30,000 indirectly, announced Welspun World chairman B.K. Goenka.

Breaking ground for the Sintex manufacturing unit at Chandanvelly near Hyderabad, he said Welsun had forged a strong bond with Telangana. It had earlier decided to set up a Welspun unit in Gujarat but industries minister K.T. Rama Rao had convinced him to shift it to Telangana. Since then Telangana has been the go-to destination for Welspun, Goenka said.

Goenka said the state’s business-friendly environment, availability of manpower and infrastructure were the main reasons for the company to come to the state. Sintex, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Welspun Corp, had considered Karnataka but opted for Telangana in view of the favourable conditions here.

On the proposed IT cluster, Goenka said it would be a kind of a backoffice or a shared office for Welspun. The site is close to the airport and the state has many engineering colleges to meet the staffing requirements. About 500 people are employed but this will be scaled up, he said. The Welspun logistics park will come up in two or three years, he said.

Sintex signed a memorandum of understanding with the state government to set up a manufacturing unit with an investment of Rs 350 crore. This will be the mother plant for Sintex and will make water tanks, pipes, adhesives and others. The unit will create 1,000 jobs in the Telangana region. The unit will be ready in about nine months, Goenka said and invited Rama Rao to inaugurate the premises.

To this invitation, Rama Rao, who laid the foundation stone for the Sintex facility, said, "We will go for elections in about two months. We will win and I will come back here for the



inauguration once again," he said.

Addressing the gathering, Rama Rao said Welspun is a popular name across the world and is available in Walmarts and Targets in the US market. "It is a matter of pride to see made in Telangana, made in Chandanvelly products going global," he said. He said of the total investments happening in Telangana, about 26% per cent of them are repeat investors.

"Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao does not believe in the State holding investor summits to attract investments. Instead, he tells us to take care of the business needs of the existing investors and they will aid in bringing more investments," Rama Rao said.

With industrial, manufacturing, IT, food processing and other sector units coming up in a big way in Rangareddy district, the minister urged the locals to consider entrepreneurship opportunities and not just real estate.

Earlier, Rama Rao laid the foundation stone for a fibre-to-apparel manufacturing unit by Kitex Garments, the second largest manufacturer of infantwear in the world, at Seetharampur. The cluster, which is Kitex’s second investment in Telangana, will have a capacity to make seven lakh garments per day and will see an investment of Rs 1,200 crore.

The cluster will come up in 250 acre  and will provide employment to more than 11,000 people directly. About 80 per cent of the workforce will be women. The investment will be operational by December 2024.

Kitex’s first investment project in Telangana was at Kakatiya Mega Textile Park, Warangal where construction of a similar-sized integrated fibre-to-apparel manufacturing cluster is on and is expected to commence operations by December 2023.

"Kitex is doing something big. It will have an assembly line that will be 1.2 km. At completion, the assembly line will be 3.6 km," Rama Rao said.