- Thursday, December 26, 2024
An official, however, said that getting investments in the state’s IT sector is still challenging as companies still look at destinations in southern India such as Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
By: Shubham Ghosh
AN artificial intelligence (AI) company based in the Silicon Valley in the US has set up an office in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, becoming the first information technology (IT) firm from America to enter the state.
“We are hoping that the initial step that we are taking, can lead to a lot of progress down the road,” Mahesh Kumar, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Tiger Analytics, headquartered in Santa Clara, told PTI in a recent interview. The office was opened in Patna, the state’s capital.
The company currently has some 4,000 employees in India, but they are mostly in the southern cities of Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
Kumar, himself hails from Bihar, said a large number of its employees went back home to Bihar during the Covid-19 pandemic and started working remotely.
“We have close to a hundred people between Bihar and Jharkhand right now. They’re working remotely and they were happy there, they didn’t want to come back,” he said.
“So, we realised that they’re very good talented people, young people, they want to stay close to home but there are no opportunities in Bihar for them to work. Even when we set up this office (in Patna), a lot of social media responses came. People are looking forward to Tiger (Analytics) growing there (in Bihar) so they can go back and work from there,” Kumar said.
The CEO, who interacts with other successful entrepreneurs from Bihar in Silicon Valley regularly, said their goal is to encourage more like-minded people to come together and use it as an initial seed to grow a bigger ecosystem in Bihar.
Tiger Analytics is primarily a consulting company in the field of AI and machine learning.
“We hope that taking this lead into account, many more companies will come to Bihar in the same way,” Sandeep Poundrik, additional chief secretary from Bihar’s industries department told PTI.
A delegation of senior Bihar officials travelled to Silicon Valley this summer for meetings with Bihar-origin successful tech entrepreneurs. “We are trying to get IT companies to start their operations in Bihar. …. . It’s not a very easy task, especially because right now there are not many IT companies in Bihar,” said Poundrik who is also CEO of the Bihar Foundation, a state government-supported body for its diaspora community.
Thousands of engineering students from Bihar currently seek opportunities outside the state due to the limited presence of IT companies within Bihar, he said.
Responding to a question, Poundrik acknowledged that it’s a little more challenging to attract investment in Bihar in the IT sector.
“Number one…. I would say their perception of Bihar is not very positive, especially outside India. Because they have never heard of Patna or Bihar. So if any IT company wants to start their unit, they only think about Chennai, Bangalore or Hyderabad. They never think about Bihar,” he said.
“Second, I think the market is not local as far as IT is concerned. We have created the infrastructure. So in addition to whatever infrastructure the government has created for startups and IT companies, there’s a lot of private infrastructure which has come up in Patna. About 12 IT towers are being developed in Patna in various stages of construction in the Patliputra industrial area,” he said.
Encouraged by Tiger Analytics’ move, the Bihar government is now planning to organise a Global Investors Summit in Patna on December 13 and 14.
“One of the key priority areas in that summit is IT. We will try to get IT companies from India and outside India to come and at least look at the opportunities, the strengths of Bihar,” he said.
(With PTI inputs)
