Dear Students,
You have heard four presentations today. Please comment on any one of the following:
1. Tyco’s Value Creation for Smart City Infrastructure
2. Share Hero’s Business Model Leveraging Asset Utilization
3. Professor Anil Gupta’s Presentation on Frugal Innovations at IIM
4. GIFT City presentation
After Professor Anil Gupta’s speech and the GIFT City presentation, I’m starting to think that there are two different ideas of what a SMART city should be/what it should achieve. I know, I hate generalizations too…but it helps organize everything. I think one of side of the spectrum, the focus is more grass root / community oriented. For instance, SMART is doing things with existing resources, and can be as gritty as taking a rice cooker to make coffee. Trying to create sustainability. Then the other camp is much more about integrating technology + data at every aspect trying to add sensors everywhere and making things super futuristic (i.e: GIFT). Personally, I think that the more realistic approach is the first option, that most innovation occurs at the margin of society. Necessity breeds sophistication… Finally, I’m not sure if it is sensible to create a 100 SMART cities like GIFT, if it means further inequality. When I was at GIFT I saw how the beautiful glass buildings were built by people in poor/dangerous working conditions. The contrast between the slums a few miles away with the glass buildings is startling. I think if we want to push for further development, there needs to be more work done at the bottom.
Our third morning began with two enthusiastic presentations by Maulik Pandarya and Anil Gupta. As an aspiring entrepreneur, Maulik shared details about ShareHero, a mobile application that allows individuals to lend and borrow items that are owned but go unused. Users are then rewarded with “medals” that can be redeemed for a variety of discounts at restaurants and other retailers. This app is founded on the idea of collaborative consumption and maximizing asset utilization. I found this alliance between NGOs, users, and vendors to be an efficient and “smart” way to reduce wasteful consumption and I hope the app will expand into the U.S. market in the future.
Similarly, Anil Gupta focused on the idea of collaborative and open innovation. Gupta stressed the importance of sharing information and research in order to improve upon existing societal solutions. He further asserted that we need to connect ideas of technology to real needs of real people and that smart cities need to create opportunities to exchange knowledge. Gupta’s presentation provided intriguing insight into the necessity of smart cities to provide not sophisticated technology, but rather the solutions to fundamental issues.
We also heard from our sponsor, Tyco corporation. Tyco provides security solutions and fire protection services across the globe. The Tyco presentation was directly applicable to our visit to the smart city, GIFT City in the afternoon. Currently in its initial phase of construction, GIFT City is planned to become the financial capital of India. With an intricate and complex monitoring system, GIFT City is being built from the ground up to ensure energy efficiency and ultimate convenience. While I feel that this endeavor has the opportunity for success, I believe it must address the potential for cultural tension and division as GIFT City prioritizes maximum technological efficiency and focuses on one industry.
We concluded this long day with an incredible New Year’s Eve celebration at the Parikh residence. It was an unforgettable evening of friends, food, and dancing and I am grateful to have experienced so much already!
Today, I realized that there might be another definition of a smart city in India. While a smart city in the United States is one that strives to connect things to the internet to control and track things wirelessly, a smart city proposed by both Professor Anil Gupta and Maulik is one that 1) enables easy access to basic necessities, like clean water and electricity, and 2) saves resources through sharing and reusing of assets. Professor Anil Gupta taught us that “smart” might mean using sensors to track and control objects, but it also could mean using heat from refrigerators to warm food, or using rice cookers to brew coffee. I was inspired to know that his definition of a smart city is a city that solves problems of all sizes.
In the second half of hour day, we finally visited one of Modi’s proposed smart cities, GIFT city, which is short for Gujarat International Finance-Tec city. While this city is 50% government funded and the other 50% privately funded, its sole revenue streams are selling of development rights and rent. I found it interesting that GIFT city is striving to be a financial hub in India, and wanted to only attract financial services institutions like banks, insurance companies, and mutual funds. Though I was skeptical of the sustainability of such a business model, I was convinced at the end of the day that it will contribute effectively in growing India’s GDP. As I study the various initiatives of public and private institutions, I hope to better understand the different value creations of India’s modern smart cities.
I really enjoyed hearing about Malik’s new app- I think it is both innovative and really addresses asset utilization. This will be especially helpful in a place like India, or Berkeley where people live very closely together and don’t necessarily have the room in their properties to fit all of the assets they want- so sharing becomes the norm. This eliminates waste because it brings together neighborhood goods. As for SMART cities, ShareHero would be great because every asset is fully being used- and a sense of community is created while helping businesses.
• I also learned a lot by visiting the GIFT city. This city is attempting to create a financial hub in Gujarat because Mumbai is overflowing. A struggle I have with this concept is that it might not satisfy the needs of people on every level, for example, people living in the slums. However, on the other hand, it is not the responsibility of the developers of the GIFT city to satisfy everyone’s needs, they are just trying to establish India as an economical leader. This smart city though is very smart because it will look absolutely cutting edge and the people in it will be able to effectively working together. I also want to point out that there will be training centers that teach specific skills to people to help them rise in social economic status. I will be able to apply the knowledge I learned from the speakers through the fact that there will be a great deal of data sharing with the city command and control center.
When I think of innovation, I usually assume that it can only be achieved with large amounts of money spent in a company’s research and development lab. But innovation doesn’t always have to be expensive. Professor Anil Gupta of the India Institute of Management talked about innovations that come from the poor. Because of a lack of material resources, it’s inevitable that the poor will use their mental resources, which is their imagination, to invent frugal innovations that are extremely affordable. One such example is a refrigerator that utilizes wasted heat to provide hot water and keep food warm. No big company has developed such a useful and affordable invention. The poor do not have to wait for someone else to come up with solutions; those who are ingenious can develop it themselves as a response to their limited resources.
On our last day in Ahmedabad, we had another busy schedule ahead of us. We began our morning by learning about people’s tendency to sell their assets for less than half price, compared to when they first bought it. This is due to the fact that we, as human beings, have a myriad of assets and some end up going to waste — eventually becoming what business innovators call a dead asset. With this in mind, entrepreneur Maulik Pandga built the business model for his newly developed phone application called Sharehero.
By reducing duplicates through crowd sourcing a sharing network, Sharehero is a solution for sustainable living. What we found extremely intriguing is the fact that, compared to its competitors, Sharehero is a one-of-a-kind app that cultivates a positive sharing culture
After listening to Mr. Pandga speak, we had the opportunity to listen to Tyco representative, Akhand Kumar, share about Tyco’s goal of becoming both a smarter and a sustainable brand. Mr. Kumar then introduced a subsidiary of Tyco called Proximex, which is a company that was established in 2005 in Silicon Valley. With Proximex products (such as smoke detectors, surveillance cameras, etc.) being implemented (where?), we now see a positive trend in the industry of conserving of costs For instance, you could access the CCTV at the park and watch your kid through your phone by tapping into the CCTV’s camera IP number. Like Mr. Pandga stated, a smart city has smart safety.
After our first two morning lectures and Indian breakfast we headed on the bus for a long one-hour drive to visit the prestigious Indian Institute of Management (IIM) University. Once we were there, all of the Haas students began to joke around and point out the similarities of the campus to that of ours. They even had a grand entrance with what we called the “Haas Steps” because it emulated very similar to ours back at home. We then listened to a very inspirational lecture from the famous professor, Anil Gupta as he talked about Frugal Innovations, building bridges across boundaries, and emerging tension in open innovations platforms. He asked us how must we address the problems between different socioeconomically societies and classes. He noted three pillars of sustainability: technology, institutions, and culture. While technology is like words, institutions are like grammar and culture is the thesaurus. He then introduced his database, Honey Bee Network. This network allows someone to share his or her research in a specified topic with the mission to solve problems by sharing research globally. He ended his lecture with a word of advice: that if you make a smart city for only the rich then it’s not a smart city at all.
After listening to multiple lectures defining a smart city we finally had the opportunity to visit Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) located at the outskirts of Ahmedabad. GIFT is Gujarat’s gift to India and the world. GIFT aspires to cater to India’s large financial services potential by offering global firms world-class infrastructure and facilities. GIFT is funded by the Government of Gujarat and private companies in a novel public-private partnership. We had the utmost pleasure discussing with CEO Ramakant Jha on the smart city and it’s future buildings. In the future, the CEO welcomes Haas students to further invest and engage with the smart city agenda. GIFT is attracting global attention with planned visitats from Bill Clinton, Dr. Jim Young Kim, Ms. Christine Lagarade, Mr. Takeihko Nakaso, Ms. Janet Yellen, Mr. Jeff Immlet, CEO, GE, Dr. Martin Winterkorn, Chairman, Volkswagen Group, Mr. Jeff Bezos, Mr. Michael Dell, Mr. Ben van Beurden, CEO Shell Global. It was inspirational to see this first step in making a city in India an international hub. Just like Prime Minister of India, Shri Modi said, “The vision of Gujarat would be incomplete without capitalizing on the in-house financial l business acumen.” Creating this city to intertwine with technology, meet the needs of modern Gujarat, modern India, and really create a space in the global financial world is an inspirational leap for India that I am excited to see take place in the near future. GIFT is estimated to be completed be 2022.
With 2015 right around the corner, we headed back to our dorms and MICA to get ready for the New Years Eve party. I’m sure most of the students would agree that the most exciting part of that night was being able to wear the traditional clothing and learn the Indian way of celebrating New Years. It was a pleasant sight to see everyone dancing together, eating both traditional Indian food and barbecue, and launching lanterns with their New Years resolutions! 5-4-3-2-1 Happy New Years!!
The theme of today’s presentations was asset utilization, and a common trend across ShareHero, Honey Bee network, and GIFT city was that many solutions were simple and frugal. “Technology is like words, institution like grammar, and culture like thesaurus.” These three areas that Dr. Anil Gupta spoke about were tied perfectly together today through the three presentations. Firstly, ShareHero is a technology inspired by the sociocultural phenomenon of making wasteful purchases and selling them for less than half the price. As a result, these assets can both be repurposed by other people and serve as tools for positive community building. ShareHero’s platform was a simple yet powerful in that it enables an entire community, including customers seeking items, NGO’s seeking donations, and vendors seeking publicity, to work together and eliminate waste. My largest concern with an open sharing economy was creating the incentive for people to share, but Maulik effectively addressed my concern with its rewards-based system that allows all stakeholders to benefit from the act of sharing.
In particular, the lecture on “Frugal Innovation” by Anil Gupta was significantly eye opening for me. The primary concept behind the Honey Bee network is that children, ordinary citizens, and other non-experts can become thought leaders behind practical frugal innovations. This is especially important for us to realize as Berkeley students, because we often witness and even catalyze the decadence and impracticality of wasteful business ideas. The appropriate goal, as Dr. Gupta stated, is to work towards a “zero waste economy,” within which all inputs have a “fatigue factor” (ability to be recycled and reused for another life) and all people have accountability to perfect strangers (the future generations who will inherit our waste and suffer from our unsustainable actions). His example of an “lpg-gas-based refrigerator in India” invented by Dhruv Mehsana was both humbling and motivating, as we should all seek to create simple solutions for activities from wasted resources, such as heating up food from emitted refrigerator energy.
My personal goal for my team’s smart city model is to “build upon what disadvantaged people are rich in (the inability to live with problems unresolved).” With Techpedia.in as an inspiring launchpad for ideas and GIFT city as a feasible smart city model, I am excited to brainstorm simple solutions for the transportation, housing, sustainability and other challenges faced by Bay Area cities.
Professor Anil Gupta’s presentation on the “Frugal Innovations” was truly eye opening as he encouraged all of us to think beyond the stereotypical perception of innovation today – that is, the necessity and utility of the highest technological promise to build cutting-edge products that will increase the quality of lives for people. Due to the constant stream of new technological products by competing companies across industries with the aim of capturing the largest market share, this has certainly led to the increase in quality of our lives for the better – but it has similarly led to the influx of unnecessary products that don’t necessarily fulfill the needs of people. One phrase he mentioned was this: “Smartness has nothing to do with technological promise that we have. We have yet to connect our technological competence.”. While this statement initially confused me, the previous lessons that we have learned from Professor Darwin’s lecture regarding the optimal areas of innovation in a business model, made me realize that all of this comes down to the common point of value creation and expansion.
While the perception of successful innovation in today’s age consists of products and software by tech giants like Apple, Samsung, Microsoft and many more, the value of frugal innovations is overlooked in its potential to achieve so much more. People have become so consumed the world today that they forget that a human being’s most valued ability is to devise one’s own mechanisms to be happy in life. This is the reason it is so important to design solutions that incorporate affordability, accessibility and availability, to create a greater foundation for innovation that will be effective in the long-term. In order to do this, I thought that Professor Gupta’s 3 points regarding the emerging models of innovation thoroughly incorporated these efforts: building upon what disadvantaged people are rich in (because this is where the most value creation and impact can be made), going beyond the long tail-long nose of innovation to speed up innovation, and most importantly, creating empathetic innovation (balancing the behavioral and technical portions of innovation efforts). Empathy helps innovators understand the weaknesses present in today’s system, and thus creates a strong foundation for them to build upon in creating the most effective Frugal Innovation.
Reflecting on the last day spent in Ahmedabad which coincided with New Year’s Eve, I believe that the desires for future and the objectives of smart cities are not entirely aligned. It was clear from the visit to the Gift City that intensive groundwork has been laid to build this impressive, self-regulating and country-sustaining mecca. Some of the most exciting innovations to me included a city to be filled entirely with gold and platinum leed certified buildings and underground utilities tunnels where a repair rover could be sent down to fix casualties. The Gift city is a public private partnership attempt to create the infrastructure for a financial hub in India which will better serve the global and technological needs of the world than the increasingly populated cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, etc. Additionally, the geography of the city maximizes international access and minimizes electricity and power risks. These are all baselines of sustainability for building a globally competitive hub. However, the dialogue before this day largely considered the sustainability of a society. Previous to our Smart City visit, we were met by Professor Gupta, who largely encouraged the practices of adopting frugal innovations that melded with the natural ecology in place. So while the goals and intentions of the Gift City can create enormous economic growth to shape India’s finance-identity, will it come at a cost of further disrupting the ecological harmony and cultural-uniqueness of the country. Does Modi’s vision improve the global relevance of the country by providing opportunity to some, while further neglecting others? The conversations between those constructing these cities and intellectuals envisioning the future in Gujurat are diverge and I would strongly encourage some alignment to promote political peace and collaborative social progress.
From Mr. Maulik Singh’s C2C model to minimize waste and unnecessary production, Mr. Anil Gupta’s open-source, open-innovation model, and GIFT City’s PPP (public private partnership) framework, we have many “pockets”, as Mr. Akhand Kumar (TYCO sponsor) called them, to capture value from using existing infrastructure and models in place today. One of the challenges with smart cities became clear: it is extremely difficult to predict the viability of one framework over another across countries and time boundaries, and thus we must look at each framework in depth so that when we do have information about our Bay Area city, we will be able to pick from our framework pockets instead of having to find new pockets altogether.
One of my favorites points from today was the idea of frugal innovation, from Mr. Anil Gupta’s presentation on open-source innovation. With all the new technology being developed, there seems to be a craze with creating new gadgets. Mr. Gupta challenged this notion by saying instead of changing what we use, we should change our focus to changing how we use. I found this to be incredibly insightful because many of our discussions of smart cities have revolved around implementing new technology to better lifestyles, but we have to remember to first consider how we can use what we already have to change the way we live. We need to find ways to innovate and capture the creativity in what has already been developed to minimize unnecessary implicit and explicit costs.
Today, I really appreciated the extremely different sites we got to visit, from Indian Institute of Management (IIM)- Ahmedabad to GIFT City (a developing smart city), as each painted very different pictures and contributed to our growing palette of experiences in India.
In our visit to GIFT city, we learned about India’s ambitious plan to stimulate its economy by creating a global financial hub modeled after others such as New York and London. This city is expected to create 1 million jobs and become home to 100,000 people, and in the long-term it will generate significant government revenue through taxes. While this vision is admirable and the development is already impressive, this city raises the question of what is truly “smart” for India and whether or not the key stakeholders’ interests are being considered. There is no doubt this city will create jobs, but they will be primarily for the wealthy and just a small fraction of the population. On the other hand, the cities are a necessary step towards increasing India’s wealth and can act as a catalyst that enables the government to begin addressing more of the needs of the poor. I believe that the smart cities ultimately provide an avenue for rapid economic growth, but politics will be the factor that determines whether or not all the key stakeholders’ interests and needs will be met. Therefore, what is truly a “smart city?” Is it one that focuses on generating revenue and building the overall economy, or is it directly addressing the needs of citizens through frugal innovations and small steps? These are questions that we will continue to explore and ones that will become key as we consider different strategies to improve Bay Area cities and make them “smarter.”
Day 3 marked out last day of lectures in Ahmedabad. The presentation that I particularly enjoyed was our meeting with the Vice President of IT and other staff members who are involved in the GIFT city project. During the discussion, I was able to get a better understanding of the grand visions behind creating the GIFT city. The developers of GIFT city are essentially in the process of creating a financial and technology hub that drive India’s international business activity. This city will utilize the latest and most advanced technological system to ensure that the city is safe, efficient, and of course, sustainable. The planners hope that GIFT city will become the prototype of what a “smart city” is. .”After learning about the proposed city, I was highly impressed and cautiously optimistic about the creation of such a city in India’s very own Ahmabedad. However, one thing I found interesting was that there seemed to be a discrepancy between the GIFT city developers and other speakers we have talked to such as Dr. Anil Gupta about what a smart city is all about. To many of our previous speakers, “smart cities” are regions that are able to utilize whatever available resources to address the “pains” of the community members. Dr. Anil Gupta emphasized during his lecture that “smart cities” were not necessarily the most technologically savvy cities, but ones that could address the needs of all socioeconomic groups present. On the other hand, the city developers of GIFT did not seem focused on improving providing accessibility for underprivileged families or addressing needs of other social classes. Rather the smart city developers are looking to create an advanced community never seen before with top-notch technology in order to drive international activity. What it seems to be is that the definition of smart cities amongst different people do not match up. I believe that if the various groups can standardize and have a clearer understanding of what a smart city is, then India could be a country that has smart cities that not only employ advanced technologies but also address every day socioeconomic problems.
Today was an unbelievably busy and productive day. With lectures from our guide Maulik Pandya regarding his startup company called Share Hero, we were able to gain insight into the ways that innovative people in India are using entrepreneurship to make their ideas a reality. This helped us see startups from a perspective other than our own in Silicon Valley, and it was great to see Maulik’s idea put to use later at night when we used Share Hero to borrow traditional Indian clothing for our New Years Eve celebration, held at the Parikh’s house. We saw how using Share Hero could help us bridge the culture gap between Priya and her friends, and help give us a glimpse into what it is like to be a young person living in Ahmedabad.
With Share Hero’s emphasis on sustainability by decreasing the purchase of goods in mind, we shifted gears to hear from Akhand Kumar from Tyco. Tyco’s security solutions and fire protection services are developing with a focus on sustainability and efficiency by giving all collected data to a single vendor command station, lowering cost for users and providing collective data reports of energy usages based on sensor data. After this, we travelled to the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), where we had the pleasure of hearing from Anil Gupta about this idea of a “Honeybee Network,” where there is a way to learn from different domains and build bridges across boundaries to create a truly smart solution that is sustainable in the long term. It was very interesting to hear Tyco’s presentation followed by Anil Gupta’s, as both gave us ideas on what sustainable and smart means, yet from two very different perspectives that we can incorporate into our idea of what a smart city truly is.
When we travelled to Gift City, we were able to inquire about what modes of sustainability they were employing to build this innovative city from the ground up. It was inspiring to see all of the ideas put in place, from energy usage to resource allocation and sensor systems that would ensure more adequate energy consumption and less outages throughout the city. While it is still abstract how we will apply these concepts to cities that are already developed in the Bay Area, we all came away from Gift with a better understanding about what is possible when thinking about cities from a “smart” point of view.
Today, we heard about innovative ways to protect a smart city, utilize its resources, and build an empathetic supply chain from Akhand Kumar of Tyco, Maulik Pandya of ShareHero, and Dr. Anil Gupta of Indian Institute of Management (IIM). Mr. Kumar discussed the different infrastructure needed to create, sustain, and protect a smart city (through fire and safety protections) and the need to integrate all these mechanisms to maximize operational efficiency. Mr. Pandya discussed how cities are filled with people who have complimentary assets and how we can reduce redundancies and waste through a sharing platform that maximizes asset utilization. He addressed the issue of asset utilization through his mobile application ShareHero which allows users to share and borrow goods and receive tangible rewards. Dr. Gupta discussed how “smart” cities should question the status quo and innovate human-centric solutions. These three complimentary perspectives contextualized our visit to Gujarat’s GIFT City –the future location of India’s first “smart” city and first financial-tech hub. The city is being built from the ground up and hosts a central command center that monitors various aspects of the city; including elevators, energy usage, and fire.
Despite the tremendous innovations of the city, I believe there will be a strong disconnect between the gated-off GIFT City and surrounding Gandhinagar. The low-cost housing model for non-financial or tech workers will inherently segregate workers and create a unified culture. Going forward, it will be interesting to see the development of GIFT city and how it will innovate both technologically and empathetically.
We ended the busy day with an evening spent at the home of our new friend Priya and her family. I got to interact with her friends, dress up in a kurta pajama, and celebrate the New Year with colleagues I am now lucky to call my friends.
This morning we started off our day with a presentation from Maulik Pandya, one of our hosts in Ahmedabad and the co-founder of a start-up called ShareHero. The app is a mobile marketplace that allows people to list and share any of their personal belongings, from tennis racquets to cars, and be rewarded with retail coupons by doing so. This mobile application promotes 1) sustainable living and 2) community building. We often have items sitting idly in our homes that other people need. As a result, those items either get thrown away by us or become forgotten. On the other end, people are spending money on items that could be borrowed for free. ShareHero is a solution to this vicious cycle of untapped utility. In addition, borrowing from people near us promotes camaraderie and community, both of which have been threatened by the busier work schedules and independent nature of today’s citizens. My favorite feature of the app is being able to donate clothes and other goods to non-profits. ShareHero partners with local NGO’s and allows them to run campaigns on the mobile app. Giving back to the community is something I believe strongly in, so seeing the intersection of technology and social good is what today’s people, corporations, and governments should strive for.
Tyco, the corporate sponsor of our trip, also sees the importance of corporate social responsibility. We had the privilege of hearing from Anil Gupta, Director of Marketing for Tyco India, as he gave a presentation about Tyco and its products. They have joined us on this journey because their security protection and fire safety products are integral in the development of smart cities. We’ve learned in India that safety is a top priority of urban planners—safety in public transportation, safety in architecture to protect from environmental disasters, safety in water quality, safety in air quality, etc. This emphasis on safety is also relevant to Bay Area cities. Our location sits on tectonic plates that are prone to earthquakes and we’ve seen with the recent protests that political and social uprisings cause disturbances in traffic and safety as well. How can we design our cities to mitigate these issues when they arise? I believe Bay Area mayors and city planners should take note and think about these issues when working with transportation executives and law enforcement.
We ended our day with a visit to the GIFT city, which stands for Gujarat International Tec-City. We met with the Business Development team and they shared with us the business model of GIFT, which will be finished in 2022. GIFT will be the financial hub of India, similar to how New York City is the finance hub of the U.S. and Hong Kong of Asia. Currently financial services companies operate in Mumbai, but space is limited and McKinsey and Co. has done research that signals tremendous growth of the finance sector in India. The government of Gujarat is preparing for this increase in demand by investing in GIFT. The business model is unique because GIFT is a PPP—which stands for Public Private Partnership. PPP is a 50/50 partnership between the private sector and government. In India, the PPP business model is prevalent and most successful. This is something we should bring back to the U.S. and promote because corporations have the financial power that the government lacks and the government holds the policy making power that businesses could benefit from. GIFT city boasts advanced waste management systems, tall glass skyscrapers, and solar energy solutions that make it an attractive place of residence. However, after three days hearing from prominent academic leaders who have emphasized the need of cultural sustainability, social responsibility, and economic frugality in the development of smart cities, I feel that GIFT is more a shiny, culture-neutral showcase that does not directly benefit the masses and is not scalable. Although GIFT has many smart aspects to it, its opulence is excessive and at the end of the day, will do little to improve the livelihood of normal Gujarati people. Rather, the “too big to fail” financial institutions that GIFT would house (Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse) will employ already wealthy ex-pats and Indians from metropolitan cities like Delhi and Mumbai. The 1 million jobs created that GIFT estimates is exaggerated and a statistic used as a social and ethical justification of the development of GIFT. The everyday Guajarati citizen might become employed as a residual of the GIFT city development, as a valet driver, security guard, or other service related job. The number of such jobs available is much less than 1 million. My takeaway from this visit was remembering to preserve the culture of Bay Area and exercising social responsibility when consulting with the mayors and urban planners.
Probably the first real exposure I’ve had to a full-fledged smart city came after our visit to GIFT city in Ahmedabad. As we drove up, I must admit that I was skeptical that this was going to become a tech and finance hub because there were simply two 28 story buildings standing next to each other in a rural area. However, once we entered the GIFT city headquarters and received a presentation on the planning of the city, I was reassured that the location and development of the city was extremely strategic. Not only was it placed near the Ahmedabad International Airport, but the land was given to the GIFT city corporation in a novel public-private partnership. Companies that want to develop pay a nominal development fee and yearly land lease that comes out in the hundreds of American dollars. By keeping development costs so low, the city allows for more rapid development and will provide office space that is far cheaper than Delhi or Mumbai. Because GIFT is a specialized city waiting for International certification (to be the first city to be certified to conduct trade on Indian soil), the corporation is not worrying about profit/loss at this point — rather creating a city that will provide 500,000 indirect (service) and 500,000 direct new finance and technology jobs in India. Moreover, every aspect of living and working in the city has been planned out in terms of creating the most advanced and efficient infrastructure and using one interface in two control centers to control every single building and utility. The interface was so simple yet amazingly precise in that one could change the temperate for one thermostat on the 15th floor of a specific building or check the status of one fire alarm on another floor. Every building in GIFT will have this level of control, so this makes me extremely excited to come back in 2022 at estimated completion to see the efficiency achieved with such intricate planning and management interfaces. After GIFT, we also went to Priya’s home for a New Years celebration where we ate barbecue, listened to both Indian and American music, and launched lanterns with our New Years resolutions into the sky! Having one of the only two lanterns to successfully launch (with the help of one of my colleagues) was a very exciting way to start the New Years!
With the start-up culture in India flourishing, we had the privilege of starting our day off by hearing from a local entrepreneur by the name of Maulik Pandya. Mr. Pandya has been working to develop an app called ShareHero, which provides a platform for sharing one’s personal assets to others within a community. By “game-ifying” the lending process through a point-and-reward system via medals, ShareHero not only differentiates itself from its current competitors but also works towards fostering sustainability. That is, the app combats the “throwaway” or “designed-for-the-dump” mindset which is deeply engrained within modern society where the productive life or usage of a product becomes increasingly shorter and shorter; lending through ShareHero eliminates the potential waste that would be created if a product would be thrown away or left idly unused, ultimately providing benefits to those in need and the environment.
Following, we met with Akhand Kumar, the Managing Director of Marketing of Tyco, and Anil Gupta, a professor at IIM. Both presenters highlighted the importance of specialization and the integral role it plays within the concept of a Smart City. Mr. Kumar described the products and processes Tyco provides for life safety. As a world-renowned company, Tyco is forefront in its security solutions and fire protection. Then Mr. Gupta pointed to the need for an open source network filled with specialized knowledge. He called for an integrated mechanism that was open to the public to foster collaborative efforts and strengthen the “smartness” of a city. As we continue onto Delhi, I’m looking forward to see if other cities in India are moving towards both the breakdown of specialization via open sourcing and collaboration and the implementation of specialized skill sets in the building of Smart Cities.