On Tuesday, Nara Lokesh, the minister of electronics and IT for Andhra Pradesh, asked Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to extend the IT giant’s cooperation to the state government in the areas of smart city initiatives and digital governance.
Lokesh, who is currently in the United States, has been meeting with the leaders of several top IT companies. As part of his mission, he met with Nadella at the Microsoft headquarters at Redmond in Washington.
The minister reminded Nadella that the father of the Microsoft CEO had served a number of IAS officer posts in the state and invited him to visit Andhra Pradesh in the days ahead.
He claimed that N Chandrababu Naidu, his father and chief minister, headed the effort to establish a Microsoft development center in Hyderabad and transform the city into a center for information technology. “He has plans to transform Andhra Pradesh as the IT capital. As part of the strategy, we are setting up new IT hubs and innovation parks. We seek the active cooperation of Microsoft to take the IT hubs to a global level,” Lokesh said.
The minister was confident that Andhra Pradesh would soon become a regional hub for international institutions specializing in data centers and cloud infrastructure. “The state has all facilities and opportunities required for such centers. It has a strong academic record for generating the best talented youth in IT and engineering,” he said, and he requested the Microsoft CEO focus on this aspect.
He also said that agriculture, which is the backbone of India, if artificial intelligence (AI) is integrated with agriculture, then the sector will definitely see radical improvements. He said that the state government has a proposal to make Amravati the AI capital. “We are going to establish an AI university in Amaravathi as part of this programme,” he added.
Nadella promised to provide all assistance in advancing Andhra Pradesh’s status as a hub for artificial intelligence and digital transformation. Earlier, while also meeting Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayan in San Francisco, Lokesh talked about setting up his research and development (R&D) wing in Andhra Pradesh and partnering with him in driving smart governance and AI in the state.
Following talks with business partners, Narayan stated that a decision regarding investments in the state would be made shortly.
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