CII in smart city deal with Hitachi India, Siemens

NEW DELHI: Industry body CII has entered into an agreement with IT companies Hitachi India and Siemens to form a consortium that would create pilots in smart city projects and replicate them throughout the country.

The Narendra Modi government is planning to set by 100 smart cities in the country and the memorandum of understanding signed is the part of the program to take the initiative on smart cities forward.

"The smart city initiative shall be driven by technology driven companies. Learnings gathered from the best practices across the world in the management of water, public resources, public spaces and technology etc shall be shared while implementing the smart cities concept in India," said Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion Secretary Amitabh Kant.

The MoU was signed by Ichiro Iino, MD, Hitachi, Sunil Mathur, MD and CEO, Siemens, and CII DG Chandrajit Banerjee in the presence of DIPP Secretary Amitabh Kant.

Kant also added that while cities occupy only 3 % of the total geographical area of the world, they contribute nearly 80% of GDP and 2/3rd of global emissions. Hence, there was a challenge to do urbanization in an innovative and systematic manner.

He said that smart city initiative shall be driven by technology driven companies.

Earlier, in his address, Banerjee said that this MoU provides a platform for coming together of leading technology companies such as Hitachi and Siemens and this will enable the implementation of vision of hundred smart cities in the country.