'Avoid North-South politics’: Mohandas Pai schooled by Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu, Google exec over 'Bengaluru ignored' post

Sridhar Vembu responded to a post by Mohandas Pai questioning why Bengaluru was picked for the government's AI Centres of Excellence (CoE) plan.

Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu responded to a post by Mohandas Pai in which the former CFO of Infosys questioned the centre on why the government did not did not pick Bengaluru as one of the places to set up the AI Centre Excellence.

Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu responded to Mohandas Pai's remarks.

On Tuesday, Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan announced the establishment of three AI Centres of Excellence (CoE) focused on healthcare, agriculture and sustainable cities. The AI hubs will set up at AIIMS and IIT Delhi, IIT Ropar, and IIT Kanpur.

What Mohandas Pai said on AI hubs

Mohandas Pai took to X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday to hit out at the centre, tagging Pradhan as well as Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. "Minister @dpradhanbjp nothing in Bengaluru, the technology capital of India? Why are you and @AshwiniVaishnaw ignoring the South in IT, ignoring Bengaluru?" Pai said in his post.

"Bengaluru voted for NDA but all we get is step motherly treatment. Citizens here are very angry and upset at you folks repeatedly ignoring us in the South! Are we children of a lesser God here?"

Pai also tagged Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bengaluru MPs Tejasvi Surya, PC Mohan as well as Union Ministers HD Kumaraswamy and Nirmala Sitharaman. He alleged that the Congress-led government in Karnataka too is ignoring Bengaluru.

"Not investing enough in Bengaluru!" Pai said.

A day after the former Infosys leader's tirade, Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu responded, saying he was co-chair of the panel that decided the three AI hubs.

"The committee itself had plenty of us from the South (probably the majority). Most of us came from the private sector and the government did not tell us who we should select," Vembu said, adding that the committee selected the locations based on a "very thorough evaluation".

"The responsibility for this decision on the AI Centres of Excellence should be with us in the committee and personally with me as co-chair and I beg people to not inject North-South politics in this."

Take a look at Sridhar Vembu's response:

The Tamil Nadu-based entrepreneur said the AIIMS consortium includes IISc Bengaluru and IIT Madras.

Manish Gupta, Director at Google DeepMind, also chimed in, saying he was part of the selection committee.

"... I fully stand by our collective decisions. We made our decisions based on what we felt was good for India," the Google executive based in Bengaluru said on X.