Bihar beckons for Silicon Valley as American AI firm enters state
Bihar, which is not known for hosting IT companies, is now trying to woo Silicon Valley. The entry of a US AI firm has set the ball rolling, it seems
Bihar may be known for its Buddhist monasteries but certainly not for Information Technology.
Not many of the geeks in Silicon Valley are even probably aware of the state in eastern India. "If any IT company wants to start their unit, they only think about Chennai, Bangalore or Hyderabad," said Sandeep Poundrik, additional chief secretary, department of industries, Bihar in an interview to PTI.
"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 added.
But, all this is about to change now.
US AI company opens office in Bihar
For in a key development, a Silicon Valley-based Artificial Intelligence company has for the first time opened an office in Bihar.
Tiger Analytics, headquartered in Santa Clara, has opened its fourth office in the country in Patna this month.
It's interesting how the company decided to open an office in Bihar. According to Mahesh Kumar, founder and CEO of Tiger Analytics, a large number of their employees during Covid went back home to Bihar 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 told PTI.
“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,” said Kumar, who himself is from Bihar.
The US company, which is primarily a consulting company in the field of AI and machine learning, has 4,000 employees in India. And, they are mostly located in their Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad offices.
Initial steps
According to Kumar, who is in touch with other Bihar entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, their objective is to inspire more like-minded individuals to unite and use this initial step to develop a larger ecosystem in Bihar.
"We are hoping that the initial step we are taking can lead to lot of progress and significant advancements in the future,” Kumar said in the interview.
Bihar invites more companies
Meanwhile, Sandeep Poundrik, additional chief secretary, department of industries, Bihar said, “We hope that taking this lead into account, many more companies will come to Bihar in the same way."
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.
Besides the perception of Bihar that is not very positive, especially outside India, Poundrik said that secondly, he thinks 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 start-ups 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.
