The Maharashtra government has signed an MoU with CISCO on the smart cities project, starting with Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’s home town of Nagpur as the pilot project. Saying it was a proud moment to witness the signing of the deal with Cisco in San Fransisco for “Nagpur As S
mart City”, Fadnavis said, “It is my endeavour to smarten the whole of Maharashtra. It should not start and stop at Nagpur alone. I would like to proceed with the same zeal and commitment to upgrade villages to towns and towns to cities in phases across the state.” To CISCO, he said, “Your experience in developing Barcelona as a smart city will be very useful to us. No two cities can be identical, and the challenges in Nagpur will be very different. But I am confident that with advanced technology, one can take on the challenges.”
The CM mentioned that the signing of the MoU coincided with the beginning of Digital India Week. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “smart cities” project, 10 cities from Maharashtra will get a facelift. Outlining the advantages of Nagpur, which is geographically at the centre of India, the CM said the metro project has been sanctioned and the first Indian Institute of Information and Technology has been approved. Earlier, Fadnavis visited Silicon Valley at San Fransisco, where he discussed policies with premier startup and venture capital fund promoters. Sanjay Subedhar, founding managing director of Storm Ventures, venture capitalists Prakash Bhalerao and Duncan Davidson of Bullpen Capital attended the meeting. At the Google headquarters, Fadnavis held discussions with the senior company leadership. A senior officer in the delegation said, “Google officials displayed great interest in building a strategic relationship in areas of Street View, Access and Google Education.” The meeting at Google lasted an hour, during which product managers demonstrated innovative technologies and products which could be useful in solving large-scale issues in Maharashtra. Google has consented to sending a team to Maharashtra, where three pilot projects will be rolled out. Fadnavis termed his discussion on advanced collaboration on establishment of security centre of excellence with Symantec as ‘fruitful’. Later at the Invest Maharashtra Round Table Conference, Fadnavis spoke on the technological expertise of Maharashtra. –
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