Hyderabad inks LOI to emerge as India's first Formula E host city

HYDERABAD: Hyderabad is all set to make its way to the global motorsports map, with Formula E, the electric car racing championship, deciding to make Hyderabad a host city for the upcoming season.
If all goes well, Hyderabad would enter into a final agreement with Formula E over the next 2-3 months and host a race in the November 2022-March 2023 period.
A team from Formula E, including its co-founder and chief championship officer Alberto Longo and track and overlay director Agus Zomano, which is on a two-day visit to the city, inked a letter of intent with the government of Telangana making Hyderabad an official candidate host city.The agreement was inked between Formula E and the Telangana government in the presence of Telangana’s industries & IT minister KT Rama Rao.
Hyderabad was chosen as part of Formula E’s global hunt for new locations. Formula E, which was conceived only in 2011 and had its first race in 2014 is fast accelerating in terms of interest with cumulative viewership estimated at around 500 million.
“Hyderabad has always been a happening place and has a cosmopolitan crowd that has awareness and appetite for such marquee events. This shall be one of the flagship events for the dtate, putting Hyderabad on the global map, joining global cities such as Paris, Rome, London, Hong Kong, New York, Berlin, Monaco,” KTR said on the occasion.
He said Telangana’s vision is to become most the electrified state in India in terms of mobility, and events like this will help the state achieve that goal.
During the signing of LOI, Formula E CCO Alberto Longo said, “We are excited about our potential entry to India and Hyderabad truly has the necessary ingredients to be a probable host from the next season. India has supported the championship since day one having a team in Mahindra. It has always been our desire to come to India as it a major automotive market quickly adopting electric vehicles. We hope Formula E can accelerate this change.”