This week, software firm Interapt launched a free data analytics training program in Kentucky, in collaboration with the consulting firm Ernst and Young.   

“My vision has always been to create 10,000 technology jobs” in Kentucky, Ankur Gopal, founder of Interapt, said in a statement. The company, which builds mobile apps, is based in Louisville, Kentucky.

The training of the 15 to 24 people, selected for the current Frankfort Skills Apprenticeship Program, will be funded by the local government and a philanthropy, the Richard and Anna Marie Rosen Charitable Fund.

Interapt, which will run the program, helps unemployed, underemployed, former soldiers and their spouses, and high schoolers, irrespective of age, to learn coding, data analysis, and other technology skills that will qualify them for higher paying jobs in their communities.  

Those completing the multi-week program will be offered a one year paid apprenticeship at Interapt or placed in jobs at the local offices of Ernst and Young and other companies. The apprenticeship program is backed by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Interapt is a mobile and web application development firm, with around 300 employees, serving local businesses as well as local operations of GE Appliances and other major companies.

Interapt was founded in 2008 by Ankur Gopal in his apartment, while he was living in Silicon Valley.

He moved the start-up to his hometown of Owensboro, Kentucky, initially working out of his parents’ basement. While the business picked up, he had to turn away clients since he could not find local talent.

He also found that college graduates from Colorado, New York, Chicago and San Francisco had no interest in moving to Kentucky. So he realized he would have “to find people who like living (in Kentucky, meaning locals) and then scale them up,” he told the PBS News Hour. “We can solve skilling and growth problems, as well as the equity problem that we face in America, by creating jobs and skills for people that typically were left behind from the tech economy,” he added. .

In 2015, Steve Beshear, the state governor, and other officials sought Gopal’s help in creating technology jobs. He told them that there can be no development of tech businesses in the state without developing a skilled workforce. He also said people must be paid to learn skills and that you must instill hope in them.

Gopal’s first training program was in rural Kentucky, a region which lost most of its jobs due to the closure of local coal mines. He selected 50 from a pool of 800 applicants and put them through eight hours of training a day, for six months. Today, 35 of them continue to work in technology jobs.

So far, Interapt has trained 86 people. In 2015, Gopal, 47 years old, set up a foundation to raise funds to support tech training programs that upskill to effect “a living wage in an industry that has a forever trajectory.” Its goal is to “attract the unfound talent then train them. The talent gap is our opportunity.”

Earlier, from 2005 to 2010, Ankur Gopal was a founding partner of Revasyst, which helps hospitals and physicians get more revenues out of their operations by utilizing technology and best business practices.

From 2000 to 2006, he was an information technology consultant at Accenture in Chicago.

In 2006, Gopal completed a program in entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. From 1997 to 2000, he studied e-commerce and management information systems at the University of Dayton, Ohio. He earned a degree in economics, history and Hindi, from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1996.  

At Owensboro Catholic High School, in Kentucky, he was “good at tennis and very, very good at spelling” he told a TEDx audience in Palo Alto, California, in 2018. The title of his talk was: Opportunity as a Service: Igniting Human Potential.

Gopal’s father came to the U.S from New Delhi to study at the University of Missouri. Upon graduation, he worked as a petroleum engineer in Kentucky. Gopal’s parents had an arranged marriage in India. His mother is a physician.   

“There were some people who did not want my father to succeed as an engineer or my mother to find work as a doctor in a hospital,” Gopal said in his TEDx talk. But there were numerous others who invited his parents to their homes, were generous and offered opportunities, he added.

His father taught him to dream big and persevere while his mother taught him empathy, Gopal says. “My mother helped thousands of patients, most of whom would not be seen by other doctors since they could not pay. She also ran a free clinic for thousands.” One grateful patient, a former drug addict working for Walmart, named her daughter Nomita after Gopal’s mother.

Gopal’s training programs in Kentucky have gotten wide media and public attention. For instance, this Hasan Minhaj 2017 story about it for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah has gotten 1.5 million views on YouTube.

Gopal believes in capitalism with a conscience. He told the TEDx audience, “Entrepreneurs have a true responsibility to help create opportunities for others, lift people up.”

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