Global e-commerce giant Amazon opened the world’s largest campus building in Hyderabad on Wednesday. While it was built in a record time of three years, Telangana Principal secretary Jayesh Ranjan revealed at the launch that the approval for Amazon to set up such a massive facility in the heart of the city was given by the government in just 11 days. And this was done with the help of TS-iPASS.

Telangana State Industrial Project and Self-Certification System (TS-iPASS) is a self-certification service by the state that allows companies to obtain speedy approvals to do business with the state through a single window within a stipulated timeline.

“Amazon has a very complicated building structure. It has interconnected corridors, multiple parking spaces and having had experiences of working with the Urban development authority, the company would have required at least a year to obtain permission (to do business with the state). But because of TS-iPASS, Amazon obtained its certification in a record number of 11 days,” he said.

Speaking to TNM, Jayesh Ranjan said that until a few years ago, from junior officers to senior engineers, the process of approval prior to the introduction of TS-iPASS took several months for certification.

“Officers would point out trivial issues like using red ink over blue ink to using the photocopy of a certificate instead of its original. There used to be extortion and people would deal the issue with vested interests. However, with the help of TS-iPASS, the process is now transaparent and much simplified,” he said.

According to Jayesh, the new system now generates a date when the officials have to mandatorily visit and inspect the sites. In case of major glitches, the software allows a time period of three days for the officials to raise a query and that’s the only time frame when the officers can ask questions. Most of the documents can be now submitted online instead of carrying papers in big suitcases to offices.

“For companies like IKEA and Amazon, some exemptions are made in the case of bye-laws, to ensure that the construction of the company’s modern infrastructure is not hindered because the laws we follow in the state are still archaic,” he added, reiterating that the exemptions don’t mean that any of the safety measures are compromised or overlooked.

Jayesh Ranjan also said that he placed three requests in front of the e-commerce giant at improving the technological landscape of Hyderabad and Telangana. The official said the state is looking forward for Amazon to provide opportunities to the textile industry and weavers in the state by providing them marketing support through Amazon’s global platform.

He also added that Amazon, which has mastered machine learning through virtual assistants like Alexa, can play a major role in altering the AI (Artificial Intelligence) landscape of the city. He invited the company to be a major partner of the state’s Centre for Excellence and also urged Amazon to actively engage in more CSR activities by partnering with the Telangana social impact group.

With 1.8 million square feet office space built over 3 million square ft area, the newly opened state-of-the-art campus can house over 15,000 employees. This is Amazon's single largest building in the world in terms of area. Amazon laid the foundation stone for the campus building in March 2016. An average of 2,000 workers every day finished building the facility in three years, spending 18 million man-hours.

With the coming of the new building, Hyderabad is now home to one-third of Amazon employees in India and will have the largest IT employee base outside the US.

With inputs from Shilpa S Ranipeta

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