India-Montgomery business link gets boost

The welcoming ceremony on July 14 featured remarks by County Executive Isiah Leggett (D), county director of the Department of Economic Development Pradeep Ganguly, and other government, business and Indian embassy officials.

The companies — Jiva Internet Solutions, Alliance Infotech, Interra Information Technologies, PT Puretesting Software and Heuristics Informatics — are members of the Indian Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council, whose executives first met with county representatives during a county delegation’s economic development mission to India in November.

‘‘On the East Coast we considered New York, New Jersey, Virginia and Maryland,” Nalin Kohli said in a statement. Kohli is the council’s immediate past chairman and president of the Association of Small and Medium Knowledge Industries in India, who developed a pilot program to identify companies that could benefit from a physical presence in the United States.

‘‘It was a difficult choice, but we were very impressed with Montgomery County and by the county executive’s decision to send a delegation to meet with our members in New Delhi last fall. We are very happy with our decision, and now as president of [the industry association], I want to extend this same type of initiative to India’s biotech and defense industries.”

Vanit Kumar, Jiva’s CEO and managing director, said, ‘‘When we came to know about this opportunity to open an office in the U.S., this was the ideal platform we were looking for.” Jiva, which provides call center and Web-enabled IT services and products, has 100 employees in Andhra Pradesh, and already did $450,000 in U.S. sales last year, according to county information. Heuristics, of Haryana, which provides IT consulting services, did $600,000 in U.S. sales last year.

The five companies, which signed a lease for a six-month period with a month-to-month lease agreement to follow, are to initially use one incubator office in the cooperative venture, with two employees, including a marketing executive and a support person, to provide marketing, sales and business development services, according to Ganguly.

‘‘We are certainly delighted to welcome these companies to our Rockville Innovation Center, and look forward to their growth and success in the months and years ahead,” Leggett said.

‘‘Today is just the beginning. India plans to be a key player in the knowledge economy and Montgomery County is already on the cutting-edge of emerging technologies, so there are synergies in economic strategies,” said Sheila Khatri, president of business development consulting company Moti International of Gaithersburg, in an e-mail.

‘‘The Indian government assertively supports their small and medium enterprises, recognizing that they are responsible for a higher rate of innovation and growth than their larger counterparts,” Khatri said. ‘‘With the closer political ties forming between the U.S. and India, I expect we’ll see a lot more Indian technology companies expand in the U.S., including biotechnology, defense and IT firms. Attracting these five companies is a great first step. It paves a path to attract more Indian companies to Montgomery County. The opportunities are huge.”

The Rockville Innovation Center has 26 companies.

Montgomery County’s Business Innovation Network has seen more than 85 biotech, informatics, telecommunications, IT and related advanced technology companies, and business services companies, graduate from its incubators. Those companies have created more than 1,800 jobs and occupy more than 500,000 square feet of commercial space in the county, according to county information.

This report originally appeared in The Business Gazette.