Industries of Telangana

The shape of the economy

Telangana is a services-led economy. Software and finance dominate output, industry contributes roughly a fifth, and agriculture — though the smallest share of what the state produces — still supports close to half of everyone who works.

• Services~ two-thirdsIT, finance, trade and tourism.
• Industry~ one-fifthPharma, manufacturing, construction.
• Agriculture~ one-sixthRice, cotton and more.

Sources: the Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation and the Telangana Socio-Economic Outlook. Shares are rounded and move year to year; the services share was reported at 68.6% of gross state value added in 2025-26.

Where the work is

Which sectors employ people, where those jobs physically are, and the fields of study that usually lead into each. This is orientation, not a vacancy list — see the note below.

IT & software

Hyderabad ranks second among Indian cities for software exports, and IT is comfortably the state's largest export earner. The industry is concentrated in a compact western arc of the city — HITEC City, Gachibowli, Madhapur and the Financial District — the belt that earned the capital its "Cyberabad" nickname.

The fastest-moving part of this is the global capability centre — the offshore engineering and operations arm of a multinational, doing core product work rather than outsourced support. Hyderabad now hosts several hundred, and they are reported to account for roughly 36–38% of the state's IT exports.

Global firms with major Hyderabad operations

Headquartered in Telangana

Sources: the Telangana Department of Information Technology, Electronics & Communications and Invest Telangana for export and employment figures; Software Technology Parks of India for export reporting. Global-capability-centre counts vary between listings depending on how a centre is defined, so the count is given as a range. This is a listing of presence, not a ranking or endorsement.

Pharma & life sciences

If IT is the state's largest earner, pharmaceuticals are its oldest industrial strength — and the one Hyderabad is best known for internationally. The city makes around two-fifths of India's bulk drugs, the active ingredients from which finished medicines are made, which is why it is routinely called India's bulk drug capital.

Genome Valley, spread over roughly 2,000 acres north-east of the city, anchors the cluster. Described as India's first organised life-sciences cluster of its kind, it combines research, training and manufacturing on one site, and the wider Hyderabad cluster is home to some 800 pharmaceutical and biotech companies. The city is also a significant node in global vaccine supply — a role that became widely visible during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Headquartered in Telangana

Sources: Pharmexcil for bulk-drug share; Invest Telangana and the Telangana Life Sciences Foundation for cluster size and company counts. Company counts for the cluster vary between listings. This is a listing of presence, not a ranking or endorsement.

Aerospace & defence

The foundation is unusually deep, because Hyderabad has been a defence research city since long before it was a software one. More than a dozen DRDO laboratories sit here — among them the Defence Research and Development Laboratory, Research Centre Imarat, the Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory and Advanced Systems Laboratory — alongside the public-sector manufacturers Bharat Dynamics, MIDHANI and the Electronics Corporation of India.

Private manufacturing has grown around that base, concentrated in the aerospace special economic zones at Adibatla and Kothur. The state counts more than 25 large aerospace and defence firms and over 1,000 MSMEs supplying them, and has set out an ambition to become India's aero-engine manufacturing centre.

Public sector & research

Private manufacturing

Source: export shares are as reported from Telangana Directorate of Economics and Statistics data for 2025-26; we have not seen the underlying release, so treat the precise figures as reported rather than confirmed. Cluster and facility detail from Invest Telangana. This is a listing of presence, not a ranking or endorsement.

Agriculture & food processing

Agriculture is the smallest share of what Telangana produces and by far the largest share of who works — close to half of all working people depend on it. Rice and cotton dominate, with maize, turmeric, chillies and pulses across the Deccan plateau.

The sector has been reshaped by irrigation. The Godavari and Krishna carry most of the state's water, and lift-irrigation schemes — Kaleshwaram foremost among them — have extended assured water into districts that previously farmed on rainfall alone, pushing up paddy area in particular. Food processing sits alongside this as a state priority, with dedicated parks and incentives.

Sources: the Telangana Directorate of Economics & Statistics and the Department of Agriculture for cropping and workforce shares; the Irrigation & CAD Department for scheme detail.

Mining, coal & power

The Godavari valley holds the coal. Singareni Collieries — jointly owned by the Government of Telangana and the Government of India, and one of India's oldest coal companies — mines across Bhadradri Kothagudem, Khammam, Jayashankar Bhupalpally and Peddapalli districts, and accounts for something close to a tenth of India's domestic coal production.

The coal is high-quality non-coking coal, used mainly for thermal power, and much of it is burnt close to where it is dug. Singareni operates its own 1,200 MW thermal station, and Ramagundam has long been one of the country's significant power towns. Beyond coal, the state produces limestone and granite in quantity.

Sources: Singareni Collieries Company Limited and the Ministry of Coal. Production shares move year to year.

Textiles & handlooms

Telangana's textile story runs on two tracks that rarely meet. One is power looms, overwhelmingly concentrated in Sircilla — the town accounts for the large majority of the state's roughly 49,000 power looms. The other is handloom weaving, in clusters whose names are the cloth: Pochampally for ikat, Gadwal and Narayanpet for their sarees, and Siddipet.

The largest thing now being built in the sector is the Kakatiya Mega Textile Park in Warangal — sanctioned as one of seven parks under the central PM MITRA scheme, planned across 2,000–3,000 acres as an end-to-end "cotton to garment" facility, drawing on the cotton grown around it.

Several of these weaves carry Geographical Indication protection — see the GI section and arts & crafts on the homepage.

Sources: the Telangana Department of Handlooms & Textiles and the Ministry of Textiles for PM MITRA. Loom counts are drawn from state handloom reporting and shift between surveys.

Companies at a glance

Grouped by relationship to the state — where a company is headquartered here, as opposed to running significant operations here.

This is a listing of presence, not a ranking. Companies appear here because they are headquartered in Telangana or run substantial operations in it — not by revenue, headcount or any measure of merit, and inclusion is not an endorsement. It is not exhaustive; the state has thousands of registered companies. Figures on this page come from government and industry sources named in each section, are rounded, and move year to year. Telangana.com is an independent guide, not affiliated with the Government of Telangana or any company named here, and we receive nothing from any of them. See also starting a business in Telangana, universities & institutions, and the economy overview. Information on this page was last reviewed in August 2026.