Nagpur set to emerge as IT hub under MahaSTRIDE plan
NAGPUR, INDIA — Maharashtra is moving to position Nagpur as a dedicated information technology and IT-enabled services hub for central India, with state officials convening industry leaders, academic institutions and government agencies to launch the city’s repositioning under the MahaSTRIDE project.
According to a report from The Times of India, the push aims to redirect a slice of India’s massive IT outsourcing pipeline — long concentrated in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai — toward a Tier-2 city with lower operating costs and growing infrastructure, a development United States buyers are watching as they diversify their India delivery footprints.
A coordinated push to anchor Nagpur in India’s IT map
The April 27 meeting will be chaired by Divisional Commissioner Vijayalakshmi Bidari and will bring together the district collector, the chairman and managing director of Mihan India, senior officials from IIM Nagpur, the officer in charge of the Software Technology Parks of India, regional officials of the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation, and the joint director of the industries department.
Industry associations including NASSCOM, FICCI and CII will also be represented, alongside engineering and management college leadership.
The participation list signals that Nagpur’s strategy is being built around three legs at once — government policy, industry demand and academic talent supply — rather than the single-agency approach that has slowed earlier Tier-2 city pushes.
The report said that the meeting “aims to bring together industry leaders, startups, academic institutions and government agencies on a single platform,” a structure designed to align infrastructure decisions with employer hiring plans from day one.
Why central India is the next outsourcing frontier
Nagpur’s geographic position at the center of India gives it an operational advantage that established hubs cannot match — proximity to multiple regional talent pools and connectivity to both northern and southern logistics corridors.
The presence of Mihan India, a multi-modal SEZ and aviation hub, and an existing STPI footprint give the city a base of infrastructure that newer tier-2 contenders still lack.
The inclusion of senior IT mentor Shashikant Choudhary and major industry associations indicates the state’s intent to court enterprise-scale business process outsourcing (BPO) and IT services investment rather than focusing solely on startups.
Engineering and management colleges in the region are expected to feed the talent pipeline that any sustained outsourcing buildout will require.
The report noted that “Nagpur will be positioned as a hub for information technology (IT) and IT-enabled services in central India under the state govt’s MahaSTRIDE project,” confirming the city’s role as a strategic priority rather than a one-off promotion.
For United States companies tracking India’s outsourcing geography, Nagpur’s emergence reinforces a broader shift toward tier-2 cities such as Coimbatore, Visakhapatnam and Bhubaneswar, where wage inflation and attrition rates are lower than in saturated metro hubs.
As enterprise buyers pressure providers to deliver cost stability alongside scale, BPO and IT services firms that can stand up early operations in cities like Nagpur are likely to win share — a quiet but meaningful realignment of India’s US$250-billion-plus services export market.
