Silicon Valley: NetGuru Inc's Indian subsidiary, NetGuru India, has won an e-governance contract by the Jharkhand State Government, which seeks to develop "Jharkhand Online", a communications portal to increase interaction with the public.

The bilingual portal will offer online access to Government officials and will give visitors a platform to register their inquiries, download forms, view notifications, participate in opinion polls, surveys and discussion groups, search for information, access databases. The Government departments will use the portal to interact with the public on various issues.

"This project gives us the opportunity to increase utilisation of our new IT-services model, which includes the offshore capability to handle business process outsourcing needs of Government and business clients," Amrit Das, NetGuru's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer said last week. "To support these operations, we are incorporating our telephony infrastructure's voice and data lines and collaborative capabilities, to maintain effective communications and project management."

"Jharkhand Online is a landmark initiative and we are in discussions with ten other states in India to develop comparable solutions," Das added.

NetGuru, headquartered in California is engineering and IT services company. The company has offices in the United States, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East and distributors in 40 countries.