July 14, 2016

A digital native and a core techie with a deep rooted passion to creating innovative solutions and spectacular results. Coding, Designing, Algorithms, Strategy, Business, Writing, Educating & Speaking about Next Generation Technologies are Rashmi’s broad skills. Virtualization, Software Defined Networks, IoT, Deep Learning and Virtual Reality are the verticals Rashmi works with.

Uplink from Gujarat, India. Reporting on a Connected, Smart India.

Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has led several firsts in the state of Gujarat, in his previous reign as the state’s Chief Minister elect. His projects on infrastructure improvement included creating an eco-system for sustainable and green industrial utilities, public transport strategies to optimize city traffic patterns and myriad others. These projects eventually attracted an influx of both, investment into the state from companies setting up industries and a population looking for a higher quality of life.

As the incumbent leader of a burgeoning nation, Narendra Modi has now initiated the Smart City Mission with a massive funding of nearly 12B USD. The strategy to this project is unique. The Smart City Mission is targeting 100 Indian cities for development, of which 33 cities have been announced, with more to be named.

India’s Smart City Mission Logo

Reviewing the list of cities on the project, it quickly becomes clear that these are all cities with smaller populations, typically referred to as secondary cities in India. In discussing this information with Cynthia Heyn, Founder of SmartNTX, several questions emerged about how India defined the concept of “smart” and how did that definition equate to providing for basic infrastructural needs, which is a work in progress.

To know more about the Smart City Mission, I reached out to Manav Yagnik, an IIM-A alumnus and the co-founder of Decimal Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Decimal (www.decimaltech.com) , is a pioneer in creating a platform that accelerates deployment of digital and mobility usecases for enterprises, and have been involved in their own way with the digitization of the banking enterprise workflow with “Aadhar”(see previous article published on this topic).

Mr. Yagnik made a kind introduction to Mr. Sudhanvan, President at Ispat Corp., who is leading an innovative collaboration to define ISPAT’s own and other smart city planning and development strategy.

Speaking with Mr. Sudhanvan made for a great discussion and was an awesome learning experience for me. Summarizing the key take-away from the discussion; India is at an intersection, where convergence of Infrastructure, Internet of Things, Data and People will create a new value proposition model for urban development. This integration, however, should be people focused, rather than technology centric.  Though data and computing has to provide real time intelligence, an emphasis on design will conform the intelligence as actionable and most importantly, acceptable by the masses.

Link to an informative excerpt of the conversation with Mr. Sudhanvan is here.

Uplink from Mumbai,India

Reporting on the massive digital endeavor underway in one of the most populous countries in the world. Postulating at a macro level, it seems the world is a product of one term – “Connectivity”.

The earliest known form of connectivity can be found in the origin of trade, as early as, 3000B.C. Trade between countries formed a backbone of connections that were traversed to exchange goods and food, thus connecting people to cultures.

Following this, came the earliest roads of Persia and Babylon, that were adopted over the centuries into a geographical network, thus connecting people to places. The industrial

Revolution introduced a labyrinth of rail routes, which still continue to grow and connect people to manufacturing and distribution. First commercial air travel in the early 20^th century, brought those connections to the skies.

The internet was the birthplace of people connecting to machines (servers) and social network applications, eventually connected people to other individuals. We are now on the impending cusp of connecting all mundane things (IoT) to the internet, ultimately creating a connection to everything (IoE). Even despite this double exponential growth in connectivity over the past fifty centuries, a country like India, that contributes 20% of the world’s population, has immense opportunities to provide basic, essential connectivity, in terms of both physical and digital infrastructures. This is being achieved every day in India, through ambitious technological and political policies, aiding the creation of building blocks, such as the U.S. social security number equivalent called “Aadhaar”(foundation). In fact, Aadhaar raises the bar on individual identification with IRIS detection technologies and creating a uniform, collaborative, technical platform for connecting various disparate central, state and independent government agencies and their programs. The core idea is to keep it minimalistic,

Provide an agile system that spurs innovation, create a central database of 1.2 billion Indian residents and provide secure, authorized interfaces to the repository. The potential of having such a system in bringing access, to connect billions up to advanced civic opportunities, such as Wi-Fi, are the first steps to faster self–‐service online marketplaces, smart applications, information and education, creating smart villages, smart cities and a smarter connected society.