Infosys’ former HR head Mohandas Pai to government: Why are you ignoring South in IT; Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu responds, we … – Times of India

In pic: Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu (left) and Infosys board member Mohandas Pai (right). Credit: Canva

Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu responded to a post by former Infosys board member Mohandas Pai, who questioned why Bengaluru was not selected as a location for the government’s newly announced AI Centres of Excellence (CoE). Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had revealed plans to establish three AI CoEs focused on healthcare, agriculture, and sustainable cities this week. The centres will be set up at AIIMS and IIT Delhi, IIT Ropar, and IIT Kanpur.

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Former Infosys executive Mohandas Pai took to social media platform X (earlier Twitter) to criticise the government’s decision to open the AI Centre of Excellence in 3 cities which are all situated in north India.
Pai wrote: “Minister @dpradhanbjp nothing in Bengaluru, the technology capital of India? Why are you and @AshwiniVaishnaw ignoring the South in IT, ignoring Bengaluru? Are we not part of Bharat too? Bengaluru voted for NDA but all we get is stepmotherly 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? We need our PM @narendramodi @PMOIndia to intervene, give us our share too. @Tejasvi_Surya @PCMohanMP @hd_kumaraswamy @nsitharaman @what are our MP’s doing? For voting NDA our state govt too is ignoring us! Not investing enough in Bengaluru!”
Replying to Pai’s remarks, Vembu defended the government’s decision and said: “I want to respond to this because I was the Co-chair of the apex committee that decided the 3 AI Centres of Excellence.
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. We in the committee (again with so many of us from the South and so many from the private sector) did the selection based on a very thorough evaluation of actual projects done.
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 🙏
IISc Bengaluru, IIT Chennai, NIT Calicut, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Mumbai all presented very strong proposals but the ones we selected stood out in the end. The committee was unanimous in this decision. We stand by our judgment.”