Jamshedpur | 8 September 2026 — Our Founder & CEO Harish Kumar features in Prabhat Khabar's 31st Foundation Day supplement, Jamshedpur edition.
The story in three lines
- Founded 2021 with ₹1 lakh. Zero external capital, then and now.
- ₹1.49 Cr → ₹1.68 Cr → ₹2.66 Cr in three years (FY25-26 audit in progress).
- 1st place at the IndiaAI × IISc Bengaluru hackathon for NHA's PM-JAY AI Challenge, May 2026. First round of technical evaluation cleared with a defence shipyard under DRISHTI.
One principle behind all of it: take AI to the data, don't send data to AI. Sensitive workloads stay on customer-controlled infrastructure. Zero Cloud. Zero Risk.
Built in Jamshedpur. For India. For the world.
“I didn't leave India, because I wanted to build AI for the world — from Jamshedpur”
The full story, translated from Prabhat Khabar's 31st Foundation Day supplement (Jamshedpur edition, 8 September 2026), in Harish Kumar's own words.
When the whole world had settled into the belief that Indian developers exist only to write code at the direction of Western countries, a dream was quietly breathing in the lanes of Jamshedpur — a dream to craft artificial intelligence for the world from one's own soil, undazzled by the glitter of a foreign Silicon Valley. This is not merely the story of building a company. It is a story of stubbornness — one that proves that wherever your roots are, from right there you can change the world.
An ordinary home, unbreakable discipline, and a city of dreams
I was born on 21 September 1984 in Jamshedpur. My father, the late Ram Mohan Singh ji, devoted his entire working life to Tata Steel, and my mother, Kamla Devi, instilled values and discipline in all of us. Ours was an ordinary middle-class family, but there was never any compromise at home on education or moral values. My entire education happened in this city — schooling at Kadma Boys High School, then Mrs KMPM Inter College, and B.Tech and M.Tech degrees in Computer Science from RVS College of Engineering & Technology. From my first step to my master's degree, I never left Jamshedpur — and a conviction kept growing inside me: leaving your city or your country can never be the first condition of getting ahead.
Canada's call, and the decision to stay rooted
In 2008 I began my career as a technical writer. Within a year came a superb opportunity to work with a prestigious Canadian company. People usually pack their bags at such moments and fly abroad — I decided to stay in Jamshedpur and do the work from right here. Working for Canadian clients, I led a global team of around 20 developers, designers and content writers from this city. Later came Noida, and in 2016–17 I worked with a Canadian company once again. Friends and well-wishers kept advising me: “Go abroad, you'll earn much more.” But my heart always said the same thing — “the earnings may go global, but our roots must always remain swadeshi.”
The foundation of ‘atmanirbhar AI’ — with just ₹1 lakh
On 8 September 2021, I started Aarna Tech Consultants Private Limited in Jamshedpur. There was no heavyweight venture capital in my pocket and no big bank loan — the starting capital was just ₹1 lakh. From day one we adopted a single principle: we will take no outside investment. Whatever we earn, we will invest in sharpening our own technology and our own team. Our vision was absolutely clear — build AI for India, in India, for the people of India. The core idea of our technology is: “Take AI to the data; don't send the data to AI.” It means the sensitive data of hospitals, banks and defence institutions never leaves their premises or their servers — the AI comes to them and works there. For me this is not just a technical innovation; it is a step towards our country's data sovereignty and self-reliance.
From ₹1 lakh to ₹2.66 crore
When resolve is strong and intent is clean, resources stop being the obstacle. In FY 2023–24 our company's turnover was ₹1.49 crore; in 2024–25 it grew to ₹1.68 crore; and in the most recent financial year, 2025–26, we reached an annual business of ₹2.66 crore. In barely four years, a journey that began with a modest ₹1 lakh has become the combined strength of ten excellent engineers — all working from Jamshedpur. It is direct proof that you do not need Silicon Valley or Bengaluru to do big work.
A taunt that changed my thinking — and my path
Between 2008 and 2015 I went deep into web servers, hosting and server security. In my spare time I would join heavy graphics cards together to build super-machines capable of complex computation — a hobby that later became the backbone of my company. In 2017 I returned to RVS College, this time not as a student but as an assistant professor, and taught there until April 2019. I saw that our children lack neither talent nor hard work; they only need the confidence that technology is not merely something to use — it is something to build. In those same years, in conversations with foreign clients, I kept hearing a taunt that stung: “Indian developers can only write code to instructions — they cannot create new architecture, design, or indigenous products.” That sentence changed my road.
Achievements that light up the name
- Patents and certifications: In July–August 2026 we filed four patents on our AI technology. The company is ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certified, holds DPIIT startup recognition, and has a place in NVIDIA's prestigious Inception programme.
- First place at IISc Bengaluru: In May 2026, at the grand finale of the National Health Authority's PM-JAY AI Challenge held at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, our team took first place in the country on Problem Statement 2.
- Steps into defence: Under the Defence Ministry's iDEX programme we have submitted eight defence proposals, and have successfully cleared the first round of technical evaluation with a prestigious defence shipyard.
The dream: make Jamshedpur an AI hub
I am now preparing to return to the same RVS College where I studied. The plan is to start a four-year B.Tech programme in AI and Machine Learning there, so that students learn to build their own models — from the mathematics and the algorithms up. I am also building a “24-hour AI teacher” that will run on the college's own local server, so that no data leaves the campus and every student gets a personal guide. My dream is simple: no child of Jamshedpur should have to go to Bengaluru or Hyderabad to learn AI.