A Silicon Valley-based Artificial Intelligence company
has set up an office in Bihar, making it the first IT company from US to enter
the State. Tiger Analytics, headquartered in Santa Clara, has opened its first
office in Patna this month.
“We are hoping that the initial step that we are
taking, can lead to a lot of progress down the road,” said Tiger Analytics founder
and CEO Mahesh Kumar in a recent interview.
The company presently has some 4,000 employees in Bharat,
but they are mostly in Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.
Kumar, who is himself from Bihar, said during the Covid
crisis a large number of its employees 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 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,” said Kumar.
Kumar, who interacts with other successful
entrepreneurs from Bihar in Silicon Valley regularly, said their aim 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 artificial intelligence and machine learning.
“We hope that taking this lead into account, many more
companies will come to Bihar in the same way,” said Bihar Department of
Industries Additional Chief Secretary Sandeep Poundrik.
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 Bharat. 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 Bharat and outside Bharat to come and at
least look at the opportunities, the strengths of Bihar,” he said.
PTI
