Tag: Odisha

  • Odisha Chief Minister Launches UAE Investment Roadshow in Abu Dhabi and Dubai

    Odisha Chief Minister Launches UAE Investment Roadshow in Abu Dhabi and Dubai

    Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi has embarked on a three-day investment roadshow in the United Arab Emirates, covering Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The visit, his second international investment outreach, aims to attract global capital and showcase Odisha’s industrial opportunities.

    Majhi will meet with UAE government officials, sovereign investment funds, institutional investors, and business leaders. The Odisha government will present the state’s industrial policies, infrastructure, and investment-ready projects to companies operating in the Gulf region.

    Abu Dhabi Meetings

    The chief minister’s program begins in Abu Dhabi, where he will hold a roundtable with International Holding Company (IHC), a major Abu Dhabi-based investment group. He is also scheduled to meet UAE Minister of Investment Mohamed Hassan Alsuwaidi and representatives of sovereign investment funds. The Odisha delegation plans to sign Memoranda of Cooperation to strengthen business ties with UAE institutions.

    Before the trip, Majhi stated, “Our vision is clear: to make Odisha the first choice for investors seeking opportunity, stability and sustainable growth.” He added that the state would use the UAE visit to expand engagement with international investors.

    Dubai Events

    After Abu Dhabi, Majhi will travel to Dubai for direct meetings with company executives and prospective investors. Discussions will focus on potential investment projects and industrial partnerships. He will also attend the Odisha Investors’ Meet in Dubai on September 11, bringing together investors, business representatives, and officials to explore sector opportunities. Additionally, Majhi will engage with the Odia diaspora in the UAE as part of the state’s broader outreach.

    Investment Opportunities

    During the meetings, the Odisha government will showcase its investment-ready projects, industrial infrastructure, and policy support. Officials will discuss emerging sectors seeking domestic and foreign investment. Majhi emphasized, “With a strong focus on EoDB, investor confidence, enabling policies and faster project execution, we are creating an ecosystem where businesses can invest, grow and thrive.”

    The state expects the UAE meetings to open further discussions with companies and investment institutions interested in India, while exploring opportunities to increase trade and industrial cooperation between Odisha and the UAE.

    Senior officials including Industries Minister Sampad Chandra Swain and Chief Secretary Anu Garg are part of the delegation. The UAE outreach concludes on September 12, after which Majhi will return to Odisha.

  • Assotech Group: 40 Years of Real Estate Legacy and the Next Generation’s Vision

    Assotech Group: 40 Years of Real Estate Legacy and the Next Generation’s Vision

    Real estate is an industry where longevity is rare and continuity even rarer. Assotech Group has now spent 40 years navigating both—and its story is as much about what comes next as it is about what has already been built.

    The company was founded by Sanjeev Srivastva, whose early conviction was simple: a homebuyer’s trust, once earned through delivered promises, becomes a developer’s most durable asset. That principle guided Assotech Group through four decades of Indian real estate’s most volatile cycles—from pre-liberalization years through demonetization, RERA’s regulatory reset, the NBFC liquidity crisis, and a pandemic that tested every developer’s execution capacity simultaneously. Where many built quickly and disappeared, Assotech Group built a track record of consistency and a brand that homebuyers, channel partners, and lenders associate with reliability over rhetoric.

    That kind of longevity is rarely accidental. It typically comes from a founder’s willingness to prioritize the slower, harder path—clear land titles, honored possession dates, transparent buyer communication—over faster wins from cutting corners. Over 40 years, that discipline compounded into something less tangible than any single project: a brand that lenders underwrite with confidence and channel partners sell without hesitation. In an industry where trust is the scarcest commodity, that is arguably Sanjeev Srivastva’s most significant achievement—not any one tower or township, but an institution durable enough to outlast its founder’s generation.

    That legacy is now entering its next phase. Assotech Group’s leadership has expanded to include Shivani Priyam, Enakshi Priyam, Arpan Patel, and Aditya Prakash, who have taken on roles as Directors. Their entry is not a symbolic handover; it reflects a deliberate broadening of decision-making bandwidth at a moment when Assotech Group is running an unusually active, multi-state growth pipeline. The next generation brings fresh perspective to brand strategy, digital-first buyer engagement, and market expansion, while operating within the execution discipline the founder built. It is a continuity story rather than a changing-of-the-guard story—the same values applied to markets and buyer expectations the sector has never seen before.

    This generational transition arrives as Indian real estate itself is reshaped by younger, more digitally fluent buyers, faster decision cycles, and heightened scrutiny of developer credibility post-RERA. A founder-led company navigating that shift needs leadership that understands both worlds—the legacy discipline that built the brand and the newer expectations shaping how it shows up today. Assotech Group’s four new Directors represent that bridge, positioned to carry the company’s fundamentals into markets and mediums the business hadn’t previously needed to master.

    That expansion is already visible on the ground. Assotech Group’s original stronghold in Delhi NCR—anchored by long-standing developments including its presence in Ghaziabad’s Crossings Republik micro-market—remains the base. Alongside it, the group has moved decisively into two new geographies: Jharkhand, with its Ranchi development, and Odisha, where Bhubaneswar-region projects mark the company’s entry into one of eastern India’s fastest-growing residential markets.

    The logic behind this three-state footprint is consistent with how Assotech Group has always approached growth—not chasing every market simultaneously, but entering states where rising incomes, urban migration, and under-served demand for organized, RERA-compliant housing create a genuine opportunity for a developer with a 40-year delivery record to differentiate itself. In both Ranchi and Bhubaneswar, that opportunity is compounded by a market gap: organized players with genuine institutional credibility remain comparatively few, giving an established brand like Assotech Group a meaningful first-mover advantage over unproven entrants.

    Forty years in, Assotech Group’s brand story is no longer only about what Sanjeev Srivastva built. It is about a leadership team, now spanning two generations, carrying that foundation into Delhi NCR, Jharkhand, and Odisha—and building the next chapter on the same principle the first one started with: a promise made is a promise delivered.

    For more information, visit: assotechgroup.com.

  • HCLTech Invests Rs. 14,257 Crore in AI Data Centre and Tech Hub in Odisha’s Sovereign AI Park

    HCLTech Invests Rs. 14,257 Crore in AI Data Centre and Tech Hub in Odisha’s Sovereign AI Park

    India’s push for sovereign AI infrastructure has received a major boost as HCLTech announces a massive Rs. 14,257 crore investment in a new AI data centre in Odisha. The facility will be part of the state’s upcoming Sovereign AI Park in Bhubaneswar, marking one of the largest commitments to domestic AI computing power to date.

    HCLTech is collaborating with Sarvam AI and the Odisha government on the project. Together, they aim to build robust AI compute capacity for government agencies, businesses, and research institutions, reducing India’s reliance on overseas AI infrastructure.

    What the Data Centre Will Deliver

    The new data centre will combine HCLTech’s full suite of AI capabilities with Sarvam AI’s foundational models. This integration will power AI applications and infrastructure for a wide range of users, from public sector entities to private enterprises and academic researchers.

    India’s demand for secure, homegrown computing resources has been accelerating rapidly. This data centre directly addresses that need, signaling a strategic shift away from depending on foreign AI infrastructure.

    A Bigger Push for Odisha

    Beyond the data centre, HCLTech plans to establish a technology delivery hub in Bhubaneswar with a capacity of 5,000 employees. The hub is expected to begin operations by 2028.

    Together, these two projects are anticipated to create thousands of direct and indirect jobs, significantly strengthening Odisha’s technology ecosystem. This investment follows HCLTech’s earlier funding round in Sarvam AI, reflecting the company’s broader strategy to expand into AI infrastructure, models, and enterprise tools.

    Also read: Airtel partners with Google to establish India’s first mega AI hub and data center in Visakhapatnam

  • How India’s Top Sports States Built Winning Athlete Ecosystems: From Haryana to Odisha

    How India’s Top Sports States Built Winning Athlete Ecosystems: From Haryana to Odisha

    India’s sporting success has never been spread evenly across the map. Because sports falls under the Constitution’s State List, individual state governments—not the central government—carry primary responsibility for building athletes from the ground up. That structural reality has produced a handful of clear standouts: Haryana, Odisha, Karnataka, Punjab, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala have each built distinct sporting identities through different combinations of infrastructure, funding, and long-term planning.

    What Actually Defines a Winning Sports Ecosystem

    Every successful state seems to have the same basic components that keep recurring: a dense network of grassroots coaches, stable government support that is not affected by regime change, use of sports science and current training practices, and increasingly private sector participation. Those states that can combine some of these factors do better than those that just have one component, like infrastructure but no grassroots flow into it.

    Comparing India’s Leading Sports States

    Haryana: India’s Medal Factory

    Despite holding barely 2% of India’s population, Haryana consistently produces a disproportionate share of the country’s Olympic medalists, anchored by its wrestling and boxing culture. The state runs thousands of village-level sports nurseries feeding into district academies, backed by cash incentives that reward medal winners directly and a sports quota system that channels athletes toward stable government employment. Names like Neeraj Chopra, Sakshi Malik, Bajrang Punia, and Vinesh Phogat trace back to this same rural training ecosystem, built on the idea that talent identification has to start at the village level rather than in cities.

    Odisha: India’s Hockey Capital

    While Odisha followed a more focused and targeted path by investing heavily in one sport where it could dominate internationally, through the help of Mission Olympic Cells and the Odisha Naval Tata Hockey High Performance Centre, the state developed world-class infrastructure and became the first Indian state government to support a national team in the form of Indian hockey. This proved rewarding, as the result was two Hockey World Cups at Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar and many talented athletes such as Amit Rohidas and Deep Grace Ekka who made India proud on the international front.

    Karnataka, Punjab, and Maharashtra: Different Paths to the Same Goal

    The state of Karnataka has emphasized sports science and private academies, generating all-round talent in badminton, cricket, and athletics through coached techniques and technologies. The state of Punjab is famous for its hockey and athletics tradition, which continues to train its athletes at specialized sports schools even years later, despite having produced players such as Milkha Singh. The state of Maharashtra has developed itself on the back of shooting, cricket, and badminton.

    Tamil Nadu and Kerala: Niche Excellence

    Tamil Nadu has been able to distinguish itself in the world of chess and table tennis due to its well-thought-out strategies to promote these games. In Kerala, athletics and volleyball have been the two main areas where success has come to the fore, thanks to the efforts taken in sports schools and the Kerala Sports Council, which has continued to produce talent since the days of P.T. Usha.

    Common Traits Behind Every Successful State

    Considering all seven states, there are certain trends that persist: sustainable policy-making irrespective of political changes, real investment in the well-being of athletes instead of temporary recognition, and an increasing dependence on private funding. The states that have understood sports as long-term economic and cultural investments instead of temporary prestige projects are the states that consistently produce champions, and the other Indian states trying to develop their sports identity should take lessons from them in the process of India bidding for the Olympics in 2036.

    Why This Matters

    India’s Olympic ambitions depend not only on individual talent but also on strong state-level sports ecosystems. Understanding how leading states consistently develop elite athletes offers valuable lessons for policymakers, sports administrators, and aspiring athletes seeking sustainable pathways to international success.