By Ashish Wagh 

Microsoft’s fresh investment in Hinjewadi. With over Rs 500 Crores in just acquiring 16 acres of land, Microsoft has only invested in real estate. An infamous, tight-fisted (in paying employees similar to Infosys) and body shopping company has taken the route of Mc Donald’s, the burger giant. Mc Donald’s doesn’t produce burgers, every outlet of theirs is prime real estate for the company. Quality is limited only to their locations and not the burgers.

A look at Hinjewadi – It’s been over 25 years that the cluster was created by Sharad Pawar. Despite large Information Technology companies setting up shop there, it became an infrastructure disaster. And even today it is.

Pathetic water supply, erratic electricity provisions, bad roads, excessive migration, artificially highly inflated real estate prices, dead pace of Shivaji Nagar to Hinjewadi Metro service and high crime rate have added to give Hinjewadi a bad name.

Being not so far away from the city, it still gives a feeling of a distant suburb. The cultural distance is evident, but it is not of any concern to the real estate developer lobby which is defying all ‘patterns’ to create a liveable and loveable Pune. They are laughing away to the bank by creating vertical slums beyond the mountains of Maan.

So, why would Microsoft invest? Their success rate in their investment in PCMC before has been abysmal. The economics is simple – acquire ill companies who are sitting on prime real estate, deal directly so that you save on huge brokerage and cajole the government machinery to ensure everything goes according to their plan.

Not difficult to determine what made 37 IT companies moved out!!