Every morning, G. Deepa zips through Warangal’s quiet lanes on her scooter — a 10-km ride from her home in TNGO’s Colony to the Madikonda IT SEZ. Fifteen minutes later, she is at her desk, having cruised through roads blissfully free of gridlock and honking, miles away from Hyderabad’s chaos yet firmly within Telangana’s growing tech map.

For the 22-year-old B.Tech graduate, working in her hometown isn’t just convenience, it is necessity. “My parents are not comfortable sending me to Hyderabad or any other city since they are concerned about my safety. So I decided to look for job opportunities in Warangal itself,” says Deepa, who earns ₹15,000 a month. Her father works as a driver-cum-office attendant in a chit fund firm and her mother is a homemaker.

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It is a modest start to her career, but one that tells a larger story: of how Warangal, Telangana’s second-largest city, is quietly becoming the face of the State’s Tier-2 IT revolution.

The transformation began at the Madikonda IT SEZ, a 45-acre hub — 35 acres SEZ and 10 acres non-SEZ — on the outskirts of Kazipet, a suburb of Warangal and 135 kilometres from State capital Hyderabad.

Conceived in 2008, it saw its first 15,000 sq.ft. incubation centre rise in 2015, followed by another of equal size in 2017. Today, the campus houses firms like Cyient, Quadrant Resource, Ventois Software Solutions, Genpact and Kakatiya IT Solutions, together employing nearly 1,000 professionals. Quadrant Resource, with a 50,000-sq.ft. facility, is the second-largest company at Madikonda after Cyient.

Hyderabad-based multinational tech company Cyient established its offices at the government’s IT incubation centre here in 2016 and inaugurated its state-of-the-art development centre in January 2020. Spread over 60,000 sq.ft., it can accommodate up to 600 engineers.

“We currently have over 200 associates working at our Warangal Development Centre, and there is ample scope for further expansion,” says P.N.S.V. Narasimham, president and head of Corporate Functions at Cyient. “The growth here has been steady, in line with our Tier-2 city strategy. We plan to continue recruiting from the local talent pool,” he adds.

Government officials say this momentum is part of a deliberate shift.