Andhra Pradesh minister for IT and electronics Nara Lokesh on Tuesday requested Microsoft chief executive officer Satya Nadella to extend the IT giant’s cooperation to the state government in digital governance and smart city programmes.
Lokesh, who is presently in the United States, has been meeting the heads of several top IT companies and as part of his mission, he had a meeting with Nadella at the Microsoft headquarters at Redmond in Washington.
The minister extended an invitation to Nadella to visit Andhra Pradesh in the coming days and reminded that the Microsoft CEO’s father had served the state as an IAS officer in various positions.
He said his father and chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu had taken the lead in bringing Microsoft development centre to Hyderabad and turned the city into an IT hub. “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 global level,” Lokesh said.
The minister expressed confidence that Andhra Pradesh would soon turn into a regional centre for global institutes in cloud infrastructure and data centres. “The state has all facilities and opportunities required for such centres. It has a strong academic record for generating the best talented youth in IT and engineering,” he said and requested the Microsoft CEO for focus on this aspect.
{{/usCountry}}The minister expressed confidence that Andhra Pradesh would soon turn into a regional centre for global institutes in cloud infrastructure and data centres. “The state has all facilities and opportunities required for such centres. It has a strong academic record for generating the best talented youth in IT and engineering,” he said and requested the Microsoft CEO for focus on this aspect.
{{/usCountry}}He also said that if artificial intelligence (AI) was interlinked to farming, the state, which is the backbone of the country in farming, will certainly witness radical reforms in the sector. He said the state government had proposals to turn Amaravati into an AI capital. “We are going to establish AI university in Amaravathi as part of this programme,” he added.
Nadella promised to extend all possible cooperation for promoting Andhra Pradesh as AI capital and also in digital transformation.
Earlier, Lokesh also met Adobe chief executive officer Santanu Narayan at San Francisco and held discussions on setting up its research and development (R&D) wing in Andhra Pradesh and becoming partners in smart governance and AI-driven solutions in the state.
He asked the Adobe CEO to extend the company’s cooperation to sharpen the digital technology skills among the youngsters. He said that the state government was adopting investor-friendly policy and Andhra Pradesh was the right place for investments.
Appreciating the efforts of Adobe, Lokesh said that it perfectly suited the digital transformation vision of Andhra Pradesh and sought the cooperation of Adobe to transform the state into a global tech hub.
Narayan said that a decision would soon be taken on investments in the state after holding discussions with company partners.