Cisco snnounces Jaipur as first lighthouse city in South Asia

NEW DELHI: US technology giant Cisco has announced the city of Jaipur, Rajasthan to be the first Smart+Connected Community ‘ Lighthouse City ’ in South Asia. Cisco Lighthouse City status credential is assigned to a select list of cities all over the world.

With this development, Jaipur will gain access to Cisco’s huge global network and channel program capabilities; and the city will also benefit from the economic and social transformation set to occur as the country embarks on the next phase of the Digital India program.

The Lighthouse City engagement will be enabled through a joint working group, which will focus on deploying next generation technologies to impact citizens and society. With this announcement, Jaipur joins the league of Cisco® Lighthouse Cities globally such as Hamburg (Germany), Barcelona (Spain) and Adelaide (Australia).

Cisco is collaborating with the city of Jaipur on a number of key initiatives aimed at advancing Jaipur’s vision of becoming a global model and standard for sustainable urban development. The Jaipur Development Authority (JDA) has chosen to develop smart city infrastructures that will improve the efficiency and quality of services received by its 3.5 million residents and over 40 million tourists who visit the city every year.

As competition between cities for talent, business, investment and tourism increases, city leaders see a growing role for technology to enable the development of communities that champion social, environmental and economic sustainability. A Smart+Connected Community is designed with technology at the center to improve the efficient management of city operations and the development and delivery of new services to citizens

In addition, Cisco in collaboration with other technology leaders such as Qualcomm Technologies Inc., General Electrical and 3M India Ltd announced the launch of the Innovation Centre in the city of Jaipur. The Innovation Centre will be housed and operated by Genpact, and will help accelerate co-innovation of Internet of Everything (IoE) based solutions.

The Innovation Centre will be hosted by JDA and also team up with startups, developers, government agencies, and academic communities who share the same goal of bringing innovative ideas to life and jointly accelerating development of IoE solutions on a global scale.

Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje said that, “Cisco has chosen Jaipur because of the rapid transformation and modernization the city authorities have undertaken over the last couple of years and have actually implemented citizen centric solutions ahead of its time, across the city. It is a step towards realizing the vision of ‘Digital Rajasthan’. We are happy to welcome technology leaders to the City of Jaipur and look forward to their investment and expertise to transform Jaipur into the city of the future”

Jaipur will become a reference smart city for South Asia. Jaipur Development Authority has been committed to working for the benefit of the citizens of Jaipur with planned implementation of a large number of smart need based solution. We envision Rajasthan as a role model for digital transformation for other states to follow. The state of Rajasthan recognises the effort of Cisco to help us lead in this transformation" said Mr. Shikhar Agrawal, Commissioner, Jaipur Development Authority.

Dinesh Malkani, President Cisco India and SAARC said, “ We are really proud to announce Jaipur as a Lighthouse City for Cisco globally. We are also excited to announce an Innovation Centre in the city. Jaipur, as a Lighthouse City, will showcase to the world what’s possible when visionary city leaders and urban planners design and build 21st century cities connected by a digital infrastructure. The vision is that Jaipur will be transformed into a powerful knowledge and digital hub"

The Managing Director of 3M India Ltd., Amit Laroya said, "3M is a very proud partner of Cisco in the Innovation Centre at the city of Jaipur. Connected by our common technology platforms, 3M's diverse and unique products in the areas of Public Safety & Security, Smart Transportation, Smart Grids and Smart buildings can contribute substantially to offer practical solutions to urban problems. We congratulate the pioneering drive by the JDA to create a global network of transformational technology companies to build a city of the future."

"Qualcomm is committed to the advancement of smart cities in India and is pleased to be working with Cisco in order to help transform infrastructure and address complex challenges that cities like Jaipur in India are facing," said Kiva Allgood, President, Smart Cities and Industrial IoT, Qualcomm Intelligent Solutions, Inc.

"The role of wireless technologies, edge processing and machine learning can help empower such cities to make them more efficient, livable and sustainable," said Allgood.

Genpact President and CEO, Tiger Tyagarajan said, "We are delighted to partner with Cisco to set up this exciting new center and help Jaipur further grow as a progressive and connected city. As one of the first global companies to operate in Jaipur when we were part of GE and now as a large employer, we provide a number of services and solutions to help our global clients operate smarter from our Jaipur location(s). More specifically, we develop IoE applications for industrial asset performance using analytics combined with our disruptive Lean Digital SM approach that facilitates the effective use of digital technologies all the way from the front, middle and back end of our clients’ operations"