Companies raring to join smart city race

Manufacturers of operating room solutions to golf course join race

If business participation at a recent exhibition is anything to go by, the smart cities project of the government is quite a draw for companies, across specialisation, size and nationality.

The funding for the ambitious project to turn 100 Indian cities “smart” is yet to be sorted, with the Centre recently allocating Rs 100 crore a year a city for five years, leaving a large chunk to be funded by the states and private entities. But at the three-day conclave, organised by Exhibitions India, in the national capital that ended on Friday, 150 companies, Indian and international, with a wide range of products and services — solution providers for traffic management and parking control to surveillance systems and mobile tolling, cement, golf course designers and even online real estate portals — were busy hard-selling their products.  About 250 speakers from all across the world were here, speaking at 34 conferences.

Although the cities are yet to be selected, many participants confidently named these.

A top executive of a firm showed a WhatsApp message on his phone, saying: “Union Cabinet has approved the following 100 cities for the smart city project’’. The list included Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Pune, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad. Delhi was the only metro missing. Gujarat, Karnataka and Kerala had the largest number of cities — seven each — on the list, while Himachal Pradesh had only one — Shimla.  The origin of that list could not be verified, though.

Asked about the smart city connect, a representative of a major cement company, sitting alone at a scant-visited stall, explained with a smile that the firm’s “advanced” products would be needed when construction picked up for the smart cities project.

Some distance away was a display stall of Rentin, a newly launched real estate portal focused on property rentals in Chennai. Chief financial officer of Rentin, Sailesh Bhandari, pointed out how his company’s model was different from the other real estate portals — a paid model about to go pan-India.

But how would the portal be a part of the smart city project?  Bhandari said, when cities go smart, everything else must be smart too.

A similar story played out at a cubicle where Belgium-based Barco was showcasing its products, one of which was a smart operating room solution. As an executive elaborated on the surgical innovations, which are being adopted by some of the hi-tech Indian hospitals, the question once again was how such a solution would make a city smart. “Smart cities would need smart hospitals,’’ he replied.

Yogesh Wani, director, application engineering and product marketing, dvtel — an American company with Indian offices — was among the very few to say he was there to create awareness around security products, rather than to be a part of the smart city project. The company provides end-to-end security solutions, including CCTV surveillance.

Many others were confident about jointly making a bid for turning cities smart.

A representative of Parking Control Management UK Ltd, for instance, said the company was talking to Navi Mumbai, Odisha, Chandigarh and Bengaluru, among others. Green Idea Technologies, with knowhow from Taiwan, appeared upbeat, and so was the US-based World Hydrogen Energy.

The stall displaying ‘Smart City by Sweden’ attracted maximum attention.

Sweden, with its experience in the space, is exploring tie-ups with Indian cities. Claimant for India’s first smart city, Naya Raipur Development Authority, occupied a large corner in the hall, but was rather silent.