A new health care call center in Prince George’s County and a Rockville company’s $3.7 million management contract for a highway project are among the early deals announced in the state’s trade mission to India.

Executives with DataNet Systems of Washington, D.C., and RT-MediBus Technologies and the Health Management and Research Institute in Hyderabad signed an agreement to create MediHelp, a round-the-clock helpline designed to screen minor ailments and illnesses and reduce health care costs.

The call center would be affiliated with Prince George’s County hospital systems, said Karen Glenn Hood, a spokeswoman with the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Department, adding the agreement did not specify how many employees it would have or when it might open. Efforts to reach a company official were not successful.

Also in Prince George’s, Angarai of Greenbelt agreed with CI, an information technology company in Chennai, to pursue opportunities in mobile and Web applications, with a possible new office in Maryland, according to a statement from the office of Gov. Martin O’Malley (D).

The deal means that “Angarai has a great opportunity to make significant leap in the project management, oversight and business transformation solutions that we offer by leveraging technology expertise and bandwidth that CI provides,” Venkat Subramanian, president and CEO of Angarai, said in the statement. Also, “it will help us to grow thus creating more job opportunities, development and growth for our country and Maryland and Prince George’s County in particular.”

Angarai is one of about a dozen Prince George’s businesses among the 43 state companies to send representatives on the six-day trip, which got under way in Hyderabad on Monday. After two days there, the contingent plans to visit Mumbai and New Delhi.

Also, Sheladia Associates of Rockville, an engineering, architecture and development company, contracted with two Indian companies — M/S Sai Matarani Toll Ways and Gayatri Projects — to provide design and project management services for $3.7 million to help upgrade the Panikoili-Rimouli Section of National Highway 215 to a four-land roadway in the state of Orissa on India’s east coast.

In another Montgomery County deal, executives with Amarex, a clinical research organization in Germantown, signed an agreement with Shreis Scalene Sciences of Gaithersburg to secure U.S. regulatory approval for a medical device called Cytotron, which is designed to treat regenerative and degenerative diseases such as cancer, osteoarthritis and multiple sclerosis. The device was invented and developed by Rajah Vijay Kumar, chairman of Scalene Cybernetics in Bangalore, a technology and equity partner of the Gaithersburg company.

"This trip represents a continuation of Montgomery County's reaching out in the global economy," County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) said in the statement. “Our emphasis remains on the cutting edge of biotechnology and the life sciences in terms of attracting investment, business and good jobs."

Both Leggett and Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III (D) are accompanying O’Malley.

Also Monday, O'Malley and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nallari Kiran Kumar Reddy discussed signing the first sister-state agreement between Maryland and India. Andhra Pradesh is India's fourth-largest state and the country's center for information technology, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, according to state information. The idea is to commit the two states to working together on such issues as business, the arts, education and health.

O’Malley also spoke at a meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industries, which has a direct membership of more than 8,100 organizations from the private and public sectors, and an indirect membership of more than 90,000 companies from about 400 national and regional associations.

Last year, India was Maryland’s 12th-largest export market with $233 million in goods and services, and the state’s 13th-largest import market, with more than $465 million, according to state data.

rrand@gazette.net