The two-day India Advantage Summit 2017 (TIA 2017) co-hosted by
the Department of IT/BT, Government of Karnataka and KBITS drew to a close
today. The conference aimed to bring together key industry leaders working in
the domain of “SMART Cities” to bring innovative practices, best case studies
and globally tried and tested frameworks to India. Organised by Integro
Infotech and Consulting, the focus of the TIA 2017 is on Global Partnerships
for Building Smart Cities in India.
Dr. A. Ravindra, IAS (Retd.) Chairman Smart Cities India Foundation
said, “The aim of the India Advantage Summit 2017 is to address the
challenges that arise due to urbanisation. We aim to come up with smart city
solutions which involve the use of technology. Our focus is to get the basic
structure of a smart city implemented as soon as possible which includes
guaranteed water, electricity supply, hygienic sanitation and solid waste
management, well-organized mobility and public transport, strong information
technology connectivity, safety of citizens, reducing carbon footprint and
having intelligent traffic management systems”
One of the key challenges in the domain of ‘SMART Cities’ is
providing an integrated, complete and holistic solution to challenges in Indian
cities. Saurav R. Lenka- Business Head, SMART City Projects, Quess
Corp Limited said, “Quess through it's well spread operations
cutting across multiple sectors, has developed strong operational and program
management capabilities to execute the strategic Digital infrastructure
initiatives of the Government of India. Quess as a Master System
Integrator(MSI) plays a pivotal role stitching together complete solution which
includes cutting edge hardware and software components along with strong
execution methodology.”
"There is strong need to revisit the funding pattern of the
strategic initiatives like smart cities. Current funding methods are
counter-productive to the strategic initiatives as it increases the working
capital requirements for MSI. This in turn leads to increasing the cost of
capital, which ultimately drives MSI to reduce the overall cost of project by
compromising on technology" he further added.
Dr. A. Ravindra, encouraged the participants at the summit to jointly pass a
summit declaration, to strengthen the overall progress towards the goal of
‘smart cities’ in India.
The summit declaration approved and passed is as below:
We, the assembled city representatives, key government
representatives, industry leaders, bankers, global experts, city planners, architects,
builders and university professors - who work in the domain of 'SMART
Cities' commit to take the following measures in the best of our capacity:
1. Support and engage in smart city initiatives, to
complement the efforts of Govt. of India’s Smart Cities Mission.
2. Develop new and innovative models with the help of financial
institutions to facilitate/contribute to/invest in smart urban infrastructure
projects and initiatives
3. Build the capacities of stakeholders and impart skills
to young people on specific training courses that create jobs for managing
smart infrastructure/s.
4. Facilitate site visits/smart city Labs to develop a greater
understanding of how smart solutions are put into practice.
5. Disseminate, share and exchange
information, make new
collaborations by regularly holding workshops/conferences with the aim of
improving inter-city cooperation.
Chief guest for the closing ceremony was the Advocate Rakhi
Ravikumar, deputy mayor of Trivandrum city Corporation, who
also participated in both days of the summit complimented the organizers for
bringing together various ‘Smart city’ stakeholders in one common and
collaborative platform. She also welcomed the various companies that were
present to participate in the upcoming ‘SMARCT City’ tenders for Trivandrum
corporation.
Guruprasad Srinivasan, President – Shared Services & Logistics - Quess Corp
Limited, who was the thematic speaker for the closing ceremony & guest of
honour highlighted the importance of execution,quality of
service delivery and the need for efficiencyin scaling up
operations, especially in the context of smart cities and delivery of citizen
services. Drawing a parallel with the stellar growth of Quess corp Limited, he
underlined the importance of retaining the DNA of ‘innovation’ even as growth
and scale bring new challenges.
While the summit had great corporate speakers from Quess Corp
Limited, Bosch, Shapoorji Paloonji, Schneider and others there were an array of
startups and special participation from the BRIGADE Reap accelerator. Other key
inspirational speakers at the TIA Summit 2017 were Margit
Hellwig-Bötte,Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany;Prof.
Dr. Dr. h. c. Jürgen Lehmann, President of Hof University,
Germany; Wiebke Dörfler, Managing Director - Bavarian-Indian
Centre for Business and University Cooperation – BayIND. The 2-day summit
brought together on a common platform stakeholders including decision makers
from the declared SMART cities of India, global and Indian firms in the domain
of SMART Cities development, developers of Indian ‘SMART’ Township projects and
University professors and academicians involved in SMART City initiatives to
share, discuss, ideate and partner with each other.
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