LUCKNOW: The HCL group has announced a ₹500 crore second phase of its IT City campus in Lucknow, and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said the state is working to develop India's first AI City in the capital, with a goal of at least 50 world-class AI startups.
The announcements were made on Tuesday, October 6, at an event marking 10 years of HCLTech's Lucknow campus, attended by HCLTech chairperson Roshni Nadar Malhotra and Shikhar Malhotra, chairman of the Shiv Nadar Foundation, the Free Press Journal reported.
The second phase will be built on about 20 acres and add about 9.5 lakh square feet, including a new IT building with around 5,000 seats. It is expected to create about 6,000 direct and indirect jobs, according to the Free Press Journal and Digital Terminal.
HCL will also launch an AI training programme for 1,000 students from local colleges. Over 10 to 11 years, HCL's programmes in the state have reached more than 50 lakh people in over 3,000 villages, with a focus on rural livelihoods and education.
Other reports gave a smaller figure for the new capacity. Whalesbook and ScanX reported that the expansion would house 4,500 technology professionals. According to ScanX, the IT City campus already employs more than 12,500 people and serves over 150 global clients.
The 1,000-student AI programme will run in 2026-27 under HCL's LITMUS initiative, and the company has opened an HCL-GUVI Emerging Technology Centre on the campus for training in AI and data analytics, Whalesbook and ScanX reported. ScanX said HCL's TechBee programme has trained and employed more than 2,200 candidates from Uttar Pradesh and works with more than 40 engineering colleges in the region. It described HCLTech as the largest private-sector employer in the state, with more than 50,000 employees across Noida and Lucknow, nearly 23 per cent of its global workforce, about 75 per cent of them local hires.
"Uttar Pradesh is the karmabhoomi and home of the HCL Group," Roshni Nadar Malhotra said, according to Digital Terminal.
Adityanath said the state was working rapidly on plans for an AI City in Lucknow. "The goal is to establish at least 50 world-class AI startups in Lucknow, strengthening them and helping them reach the global market," he said, according to the Free Press Journal. The government would extend full support to them over five years, the paper reported.
"Under our new startup policy, we have decided to develop Noida and Lucknow as Deep Tech hubs, and work on this is progressing steadily," he said. He wants Lucknow to become a hub for AI, semiconductors, cyber security, computing technology and deep tech.
"Today, I say that alongside our precious land, we possess the youngest workforce," Adityanath said. Of the company's decade in the city, he said: "HCL has now completed ten years here, marking the first milestone of a journey."
Uttar Pradesh has seven Software Technology Parks in operation, and new ones are being built in Varanasi, Bareilly, Kanpur and Gorakhpur, the Free Press Journal reported.
According to figures cited at the event and reported by Digital Terminal, the state's IT and IT-enabled services exports have grown from ₹12,000 to 15,000 crore a decade ago to more than ₹1 lakh crore, with a target of ₹2.5 lakh crore in four years. Electronics exports have risen from ₹3,800 crore to ₹45,000 crore, and the target for 2030 is ₹2 lakh crore.
The reports did not give a timeline for the HCL expansion or a site and budget for the AI City.
