- Southern states are building tech networks out of their tier-2 towns by lining up land, approvals, and infrastructure
- Karnataka’s decentralisation push is largely all talk and no show, while major companies pick cities like Visakhapatnam and Tirupati over Bengaluru
- The difference shows up in how decentralised the decision making is—Karnataka’s KDEM is restricted to a mostly promotional role, unlike institutions in other states
- While Karnataka pushes for Beyond Bengaluru, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh are flipping the script and writing their own blueprints
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In Tirupati, the sacred and the software sit side by side.
A pilgrimage city first, home to the Venkateswara temple, every flyover pillar is painted in Balaji’s red-and-white tilak bands. But look closely, and plastered across those same pillars are posters advertising BPO hiring drives.
By all appearances, Tirupati is still a tier-2 city—apartment complexes, schools, shops, local markets, and a really big temple. No gleaming buildings, no metro, no stereotypical tech-city architecture. It’s a city built around life, instead of work. And yet, in just the last three years, BPOs such as Venusgeo, AGS Health, and String Info have created around 1,300 local jobs in the area, according to officials from Software Technology Parks of India (STPI).
This isn’t a one-off.
Across Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Tamil Nadu, tier-2 cities such as Tirupati, Warangal, Hosur, and Visakhapatnam are being built into the tech economy by design, not accident. It’s the kind of decentralisation Karnataka has been promising, funding, and planning for nearly half a decade, but with far less to show on the ground.
Over the years, Mysuru, Hubballi, and Mangaluru have each been cast as emerging tech hubs—for cybersecurity, AI, electronics manufacturing— even as IT minister Priyank Kharge has been routinely flagging his home district
But, according to a senior government official in Mysuru, Karnataka’s decentralisation has often felt abstract. “You can announce a tech hub anywhere you want, but if land approvals, power sanctions, and key clearances still have to travel back to the capital, the city never really gets to stand on its own,” he said. “We name cities and allocate funds, but we don’t actually move decision-making.”
The official, like most others in the story, requested to be anonymous as they were not authorised to speak to the media.
Outside Karnataka, the ground is shifting in ways that are no longer easy to ignore. Tamil Nadu is building an
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