Battery major Amara Raja has commenced the construction of “one of India's largest, and Telangana’s first Gigafactory '' with a groundbreaking ceremony on Saturday at Divitipalli in Mahabubnagar district, attended by state IT, industries minister KT Rama Rao.
The Amara Raja Giga Corridor aims to produce Lithium cell and battery packs with ultimate capacity of up to 16 GWh and up to 5 GWh respectively. The facility is expected to create direct employment for about 4,500 people and a similar number of indirect jobs, company officials said.
In December last year, Amara Raja had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Telangana government to set up state-of-the-art research and manufacturing facilities for lithium-ion batteries in Telangana.
The industrial and automotive battery maker had at that time announced its intention to invest Rs 9500 crore in Telangana, over the next 10 years.
The initial facilities in the corridor would include a first-of-its-kind advanced energy research and innovation center, dubbed the Amara Raja E +Ve Energy Labs. “This facility will be equipped with advanced laboratories and testing infrastructure for material research, prototyping, product life cycle analysis, and Proof of Concept demonstration. This will cater to the development needs of the Amara Raja as well as provide a range of facilities open to other players in the energy and mobility ecosystem,” the company said in a release.
"Electric mobility remains a focus area for the Telangana government and we are committed to developing the right infrastructure and ecosystem for the promotion and adoption of EVs,” KTR said.
IT Tower at Mahabubnagar
As part of the Telangana government's efforts to spread the IT sector growth to Tier-II towns of the State, IT minister KTR has on Saturday inaugurated an IT Tower in Mahbubnagar.
KTR hoped that the facility's proximity to Hyderabad and Shamshabad airport would attract companies to establish their operations in the area. Spread across four acres, the IT tower consists of G+Four floors where companies and the state government's innovation ecosystem are provided space to set up their offices, centres.