Cities of Focus: Hyderabad

India is a country that is booming with development from every corner. The country has a total of 4000 cities & towns. However for us, choosing the next city for our real estate project wasn’t very difficult. Rooted in a deep ethnic heritage and captivating historical significance, we zeroed down on ‘Hyderabad’.

Hyderabad during its initial stages had been sparking signs of a global city. Nobody would have imagined the unprecedented growth & development this city was capable of achieving.

●     An influx in the IT sector –Since 1990, Hyderabad had seen a number of foreign IT companies entering the city. At that point, there were over 1000 IT and ITeS companies that included major firms such as Google, Dell, Facebook and more. The city boasts of an employment growth rate of 10%. The IT industry has inculcated a high standard of living for the city which has resulted in an increase in world class real estate projects in the city.

●     Hyderabad’s Infrastructure– One of the high points of Hyderabad’s infrastructure is its metro. The metro, which is already under construction, will have three phases to create unparalleled connectivity across the city. The metro is scheduled to begin operations by November 2018.Plans to decongest the city’s roadways by projects such as the Outer Ring Road are already underway. It’s a city that foresees the future and is already planning to upgrade the existing roads, adding skywalks and more.

●     High Standard of Living– As per the Mercer Survey, Hyderabad is known to have the highest standards of living in India. The survey is based on factors such as crime rate, air pollution and improved options for international and English-speaking educational institutes.

●     Emerging Startup Hub– Asa city that encourages enthusiastic entrepreneurs, Hyderabad is witnessing a support system to encourage startups. India’s biggest incubator for startups is in Hyderabad. On the overall the city is promising because of its stable environment and cooperation between the investors, startups and the government.

These are some of the reasons as to why Hyderabad is one of the fastest growing cities in India. It offers the perfect combination of a city immersed in history, and one that embraces development and modernization.

A Move Towards Sustainability

As per rankings of MoneySuperMarket, India ranks 75th globally in terms of human impact on environment per person. This ranking looks at the impact of human activities on the environment, biodiversity and other resources. More importantly, it also looks at the human use of sustainable and renewable sources of energy. This raises a strong concern as for a country of 1.34 billion people; the renewable energy that India is currently producing is only 15.2 %. Needless to say, producing renewable energy is a major need of the day. Relying on non-renewable sources of energy is not sustainable because these sources will not be replenished in our lifetime. Also, population growth and infrastructure development are only pushing for the increase-in-need of sustainable energy for the near future.

With vast lands and access to natural resources India has a huge potential to switch to sustainable energy. But what is sustainable energy? It is a form of energy that meets the demands of today without creating a danger of its depletion for the future generations.  This form of energy is found to be free of cost and does not harm the environment. Various renewable forms of energy are known to be sustainable forms of energy. Solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower and ocean energy come under this category. In 2016, India signed the Paris Climate Agreement and this move has brought a huge shift in India's attitude towards climate change. Our country has been developing sustainable forms of energy in order to control climate-change and remain self-sufficient.

Here are a few developments that highlight India's initiative to embrace sustainable forms of energy:

• Cochin Airport became the first fully solar powered airport in the world.
• The newly-built Kochi Metro will get 25% of its electricity from solar energy very soon.
• Pune airport will run on fully powered solar energy by next year.
• India made its 1st solar boat named 'Aditya' and this boat completed 150 days of voyage.
• Indian railway is installing rooftop solar panels on 250 trains.
• Indian railways also launched the first solar powered train from Safdarjung railway station in Delhi very recently.

We hope to see many more such developments in the future to ensure sustainability in India's energy generation.