Hyderabad is a living before-and-after story. Until recently, it was a place known only for its crumbling monuments, threadbare culture and biriyani. Then suddenly, in the space of a couple of years it morphed, thanks to Chandrababu Naidu, into a buzzing business hub. I did a search on ‘Hyderabad’ in the pages of the three big global business magazines: Businessweek, Fortune and Forbes, and was surprised to find that Hyderabad gets the fourth highest number of mentions of any Indian city—ahead of Chennai and Calcutta. But then, one shouldn’t be surprised. After all, there are over a hundred international IT players with presence in Hyderabad. What’s more, of the 12 Indian companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange, two are from Hyderabad (only Mumbai has more). And in this year’s Economic Times awards for corporate excellence, there were no less than five nominees from Hyderabad: for best emerging company, best entrepreneur, best businesswoman and two candidates for best corporate citizen. I don’t know any city that’s transformed so profoundly in so short a time. Do you?
