Suparjya swain 
Feature: In the grand landscape of India’s digital renaissance, Odisha has long been the quiet, contemplative character—a state of soft murmurs rather than loud declarations, a land rich in resources yet hesitant to script its technological destiny. But that silence is being replaced by an unmistakable hum, the sound of servers booting, startups buzzing, and policies rewriting the rules of engagement. And at the very heart of this metamorphosis stands Vishal Kumar Dev—the man many in bureaucratic circles now whisper about as Odisha’s digital evangelist.
Dev’s story isn’t one of flamboyance but of quiet, deliberate orchestration. An IIT-BHU engineer with an IIM-Lucknow management degree, and a 1996-batch IAS officer, he embodies the rare blend of a technocrat’s precision and an administrator’s empathy. But in his current role as Principal Secretary of the Electronics and IT Department, Vishal Dev has chosen not just to manage Odisha’s digital evolution but to reimagine it entirely.
If Odisha’s rise were a symphony, Dev would be its conductor—balancing the measured pace of infrastructure building with the urgent crescendos of AI adoption, semiconductor manufacturing, and fintech innovation. To those unfamiliar with the state’s digital arc, it may seem surprising that Odisha—better known for the Konark Sun Temple and Chilika’s migratory birds—is suddenly positioning itself as India’s next tech powerhouse. Yet, under Dev’s stewardship, this isn’t ambition; it’s inevitability.
Consider Bhubaneswar, once a sleepy administrative city, now transforming into a multi-layered digital corridor. Eight tech towers are on the drawing board. A new IT park in the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack belt is being carved out. And perhaps most symbolically, Puri is poised to host a global data cable landing station—a digital gateway meant to plug Odisha directly into the arteries of the world’s data economy. It’s not just infrastructure; it’s intent.
But vision, as Dev demonstrates repeatedly, is hollow without execution. When he speaks of semiconductor innovation, it isn’t in borrowed vocabulary but with a granular understanding of design, assembly, and testing capacities. He has quietly roped in global expertise—from Stanford’s Rambus team to strategic OSAT partners—to turn Odisha into an emerging node on India’s semiconductor map. His “O-Chip” program is not just a policy idea; it is a blueprint for creating intellectual property within the state, ensuring Odisha is not merely an assembly line but a design powerhouse.
To understand his approach, imagine Odisha as a start-up in its Series A funding round. Historically undercapitalized, operating below potential, yet sitting atop untapped talent and resources. Dev is the visionary founder rewriting its pitch deck, signalling to investors that Odisha isn’t just “ready for business”—it’s ready to lead. The incentives his department has crafted reflect this clarity: land assistance, energy subsidies, stamp duty waivers, human-capital grants, and customised policy frameworks tailored to high-value sectors like ESDM, FinTech, AI, and data centres.
And investors are listening. In 2025 alone, Odisha signed eight major MoUs with Singaporean entities, spanning FinTech, skill development, renewable energy, and industrial parks. The Global Finance & Technology Network’s InsurTech Competency Centre, being set up in Bhubaneswar, promises to make Odisha the beating heart of India’s financial innovation ecosystem. Imagine an Odia engineering graduate building AI-driven underwriting algorithms for insurers in Singapore, or a Bhubaneswar-based startup powering blockchain-led financial inclusion in Africa. That’s the canvas Dev is painting.
Equally striking is his insistence that digital growth must not be monopolised by Bhubaneswar. “If we confine innovation to a single geography,” he reportedly said at a recent closed-door industry roundtable, “we fail the very people we’re here to serve.” It explains why Cuttack, Rourkela, Sambalpur, and Berhampur are now being groomed as “next-wave digital hubs” under Odisha’s Vision 2036 roadmap.
But where Dev distinguishes himself most from his peers is in his early embrace of artificial intelligence—not as a buzzword, but as governance strategy. Under his watch, Odisha has become one of the first states in India to approve a dedicated AI Policy and launch an Odisha AI Mission. The plan is elegant yet audacious: embed AI into governance, industry, and citizen services simultaneously. The upcoming AI Centre of Excellence in Bhubaneswar, coupled with collaborations with NASSCOM, Wadhwani Foundation, IIT Bhubaneswar, and IndiaAI, signals Dev’s intent to make Odisha synonymous with applied AI innovation.
For example, pilot projects underway include AI assistants for teachers to personalise student learning, Odia-language AI tools to break linguistic barriers, and citizen-engagement bots to simplify access to government services. This is not the AI of conference slides and research papers; this is AI where it matters—on the ground, in classrooms, in citizen grievance cells, in small businesses.
And yet, Dev’s digital roadmap is not without its shadows. He understands that a hyperconnected economy needs equally resilient cyber-defenses. His workshops with global cybersecurity firms like Palo Alto Networks are laying the foundation for a state-of-the-art Cybersecurity Operations Centre and a local Centre of Excellence to protect Odisha’s growing digital ecosystem. As more Odia startups and data centres come online, this “digital immune system” may well prove to be his most critical legacy.
But there is a softer layer to this transformation—one often missing from techno-economic narratives. At the World Skill Centre in Bhubaneswar, Asia’s largest skilling campus, Dev spends time not just reviewing policy but interacting with students. He knows that policies without people are meaningless, and so he has embedded semiconductor, AI, and cybersecurity training into state curricula. In one sense, Odisha’s rise will be measured not in MoUs signed but in young engineers empowered to innovate.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Vishal Dev’s leadership is its refusal to operate in silos. He doesn’t see energy, IT, finance, and skilling as separate mandates but as interconnected levers of transformation. The Puri data centre strategy is linked to the Bhubaneswar AI CoE, which in turn ties into the World Skill Centre’s training modules and the fintech partnerships with Singapore. It’s a systems approach, more Silicon Valley than Secretariat, and it’s working.
Even Odisha’s cultural narrative is being quietly rewritten in this digital renaissance. At TiECon Bhubaneswar 2025, where global entrepreneurs mingled with local innovators, Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi declared: “Odisha is no longer on the sidelines of India’s growth story; it is at the forefront.” But behind that political confidence is Dev’s administrative craftsmanship—the blueprints, the budgets, the bandwidth.
He reminds one of a river engineer managing a monsoon-fed delta: harnessing energy without letting it spill into chaos, channeling flow without suppressing force. Odisha today sits at the confluence of multiple currents—AI, ESDM, FinTech, data centres, skilling, and infrastructure—and it is Vishal Dev who is ensuring that these streams converge into a single, navigable river powering the state’s aspirations.
What sets Odisha apart today is not just the architecture of policy but the synergy of partnerships. Singapore’s collaboration to set up a FinTech hub, the upcoming submarine cable landing station in Puri, tie-ups with global semiconductor leaders, and the deliberate cultivation of Global Capability Centres (GCCs) signal a long game. Odisha isn’t competing for scraps; it is repositioning itself on India’s digital value chain. Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, and Puri are being primed as the “eastern GCC triangle”—a cluster expected to house multinational R&D centres, AI-driven innovation labs, and next-gen FinTech platforms.
If this vision plays out, Odisha’s role in India’s digital economy could mirror what Shenzhen became for China: a city once known for fishing boats, now synonymous with innovation. Odisha’s transformation carries a similar promise—anchored not on imitating Bengaluru or Hyderabad but on leapfrogging into future-ready sectors where greenfield thinking can trump legacy models.
Still, beneath the technocratic brilliance lies a pragmatic philosophy. Dev understands that for Odisha to thrive, it must not merely chase capital but create capacity. That’s why his focus on human capital skilling, innovation-driven infrastructure, and AI literacy is relentless. The idea is not to create an elite digital class but a participatory digital society. From setting up Odia-language AI tools to encouraging legal-tech startups and gaming ecosystems, the narrative is one of inclusivity, not exclusivity.
The stakes are monumental. By 2036, Odisha aims to attract over ₹10,000 crore in data-centre investments, generate two lakh direct and indirect jobs, and achieve electronics exports exceeding ₹7,000 crore. These are not isolated targets; they are embedded in India’s ambition to become a $25-trillion economy by 2047. In that broader picture, Vishal Dev’s Odisha is not merely a beneficiary but an architect.
And perhaps that’s the essence of his leadership. He does not see Odisha as a player waiting to be drafted into India’s digital league; he sees it as a franchise rewriting the rules of the game. His policies don’t merely follow national mandates; they anticipate them, often influencing central frameworks in AI ethics, semiconductor design, and cybersecurity governance.
There’s a quiet symbolism in this. Odisha—the land of the Sun Temple, where stone once captured cosmic precision—is now scripting a new geometry of innovation. Vishal Dev, its modern-day cartographer, is redrawing the map where technology, policy, and human aspiration converge.
The world may not yet be watching Odisha closely. But if history is any guide, revolutions often begin in the quietest of places. And right now, in the corridors of Bhubaneswar’s Electronics and IT Department, a blueprint is being etched—one where a small eastern state doesn’t just join India’s digital journey but helps steer it.
That’s because in Vishal Dev’s Odisha, the future isn’t coming. It’s already here.
