Hitachi, Siemens and CII sign pact for smart city initiative

Hitachi India Limited and Siemens Limited have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to form a consortium that would create pilots and replicate them throughout the country for setting up 100 smart cities

Under the MoU signed in the capital today, the two companies will prepare and undertake demonstration projects/initiatives and prepare prototypes to showcase best practices in various fields related to smart cities, a statement from CII added.

The MoU aims to establish a platform comprising industry leaders and experts and provide policy advocacy and thought leadership to government and other stakeholders. It would also manage a knowledge repository to provide inputs to the ministry of urban development on best practices.

Speaking on the occasion, Amitabh Kant, secretary of the Department of Industrial Promotion, said that while cities occupy only 3 per cent of the total geographical area of the world, they contribute nearly 80 per cent of GDP and 2/3rd of global emissions. Hence, there was a challenge to do urbanisation in an innovative and systematic manner.

Kant said that 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, adding that the smart city initiative will be driven by technology companies.

Earlier, in his address, CII Director General Chandrajit Banerjee said the 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.