A theme park ride, a health care call center and a $3.7 million highway project are among the deals inked this week during the state's trade mission to India.

So far, Prince George's County has been a major winner on the six-day trip led by Gov. Martin O'Malley (D).

Besides the call center, the county is in line for a new information technology company office, plus a partnership on potential hospitality and medical office projects in Brandywine.

The mission, which began Monday, ends Saturday and is to include stops in Hyderabad, Mumbai and New Delhi. With 100 participants, including representatives of 43 businesses, the mission represents the largest led by a sitting Maryland governor.

“It is economically irresponsible for us to not become more engaged in trade with India,” O'Malley said during a video teleconference from India on Tuesday. He was joined by Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) and Prince George's County Executive Rushern L. Baker III (D), along with other government officials and business executives.

O'Malley also was set to meet Thursday with the Indian Minister for Civil Aviation Thursday to help Arinc, an Annapolis transport communications and systems engineering services company, negotiate a $100 million contract with India's airports. Arinc already has contracts at two Indian airports.

The newest success for Prince George's is the agreement between TripleStone Real Estate of Oxon Hill's National Harbor and Shree Naman Group of Mumbai for potential projects in Brandywine.

Two days earlier, 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 immediately 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 Greenbelt.

The agreement opens up opportunities for Angarai to leverage CI's technology to service Angarai's government clients in areas of oversight, Venkat Subramanian, president and CEO of Angarai, said during Tuesday's teleconference.

He said the deal boosts Angarai's efforts to double its work force of 30 employees in the next 18 months.

The deals signed with Prince George's businesses are going to hep the county expand access to health care and enhance innovation, Baker said during the teleconference.

Amusement ride deal signed

Meanwhile, Premier Rides of Baltimore secured its theme park deal Wednesday, signing with Adlabs Entertainment of Mumbai to design and manufacture a custom theme park attraction, according to a news release from the governor's office. Premier Rides will also use an ExportMD grant to help with exporting the ride to India.

“India's dynamic economy is setting a standard for growth and expansion and we are proud to be part of a vision for a world-class entertainment destination,” Jim Seay, president of Premier Rides, said in a statement.

Also, Sheladia Associates of Rockville, an engineering, architecture and development company, contracted Monday 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.

“If not for the governor and this mission, it would have taken us another three months of painful negotiations,” Manish Kothari, president of Sheladia, said during the teleconference. He emphasized how Indian businesses often struggle with bureaucracy.

A later phase of the project could tack on an additional $7 million to $8 million as part of a 30-year deal, Kothari said.

In another Montgomery County deal, executives with Amarex, a clinical research organization in Germantown, signed an agreement Monday 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.

DSM Nutritional Products of Columbia also renewed its partnership with British Nutritions, a Bangalore subsidiary of British Biologicals, for the use of DSM's life'sDHA vitamins and nutraceuticals. The deal was signed Wednesday.

Maryland officials also signed an agreement Wednesday with U.S. India Importers to boost trade between the regions.

“Trade is our legacy, our history, our tradition,” O'Malley said during the teleconference.

He said the size of markets in India and China, which hosted another state trade mission this summer, are “so immense, it's hard to get our heads around them.”

Christian Johansson, Maryland's economic development secretary, also emphasized that as export markets continue to grow faster than domestic ones, it is part of his agency's plan to focus on Maryland's key exporters.

Having 43 businesspeople join the governor on their own dollar demonstrates the business community's “huge” interest in this area, he said.

O'Malley has met with the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh and the chief minister of Maharashtra Prithviraj to discuss signing the first sister-state agreements between Maryland and India. The idea is to commit the states to working together on such issues as business, the arts, education and health. Discussions were also held on the bilateral exchange of cricket via the Washington Metro Cricket Board, post-secondary education initiatives and clean economy promotion.

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.

lrobbins@gazette.net