PM Modi meets NEC chairman in Tokyo: NEC Reinforces its commitment to enabling and helping shape India’s digital future

Earlier this week, PM Narendra Modi met Chairman of NEC Corp. Nobuhiro Endo in Tokyo. The PM is in Tokyo on the invitation of Japanese PM Fumio Kishida to participate in the third Quad Leaders’ Summit that took place on 24 May.

At the meeting with the Japanese technology leader NEC, PM Modi and Mr. Endo discussed India’s future with regards to digitisation, smart cities and the like, and the key role that NEC has and will play in building a truly digital India. In a statement, India’s Ministry of External Affairs stated that “The Prime Minister appreciated NEC's role in India's telecommunication sector, especially in undertaking Chennai-Andaman & Nicobar Islands (CANI) and Kochi-Lakshadweep Islands (KLI) OFC projects. He also highlighted investment opportunities under the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme.”

The chairman and PM also discussed reforms being undertaken to enable the ease of doing business in India, and the potential of new and emerging technologies in the areas of smart cities, fintech, logistics and digital infrastructure.

Supporting a digital economy

NEC is a 122-year old company that has been silently driving India’s digital growth and building its digital backbone for over 70 years. Epitome of meaningful innovation and technology, NEC’s solutions have transformed sectors such as telecommunications, transportation, logistics, healthcare, citizen services, manufacturing and many more.

Some of NEC’s marquee projects include the establishment of the submarine optical cable network for CANI and KLI projects, linking India to its most remote areas and opening doors for economic opportunities in the region.

Shaping the connectivity paradigm in India, NEC, a leader in 5G and networking tech, has also been working with telcos to enable 5G rollout in India by helping companies set up crucial high-capacity backhaul to support the service.

On the human impact front, NEC has played an instrumental role in enabling the digital inclusion of citizens in the country. NEC’s biometric tech has been at the heart of UIDAI’s Aadhaar rollout, supporting the secure enrolment of over 1.3 billion people into the world’s largest digital ID program.

The company also helped India tackle the COVID-19 pandemic through NEC’s command and control centres that were converted into COVID war rooms to aggregate data from diverse sources and helped in efficient deployment of resources.

Additionally, NEC’s tech was directly and indirectly responsible for helping many of India’s businesses stay afloat. The pandemic forced rapid digital transformation of entire economies, and businesses needed to adapt, and quickly, to survive. Without the support of networking infrastructure and services that companies like NEC helped build, it’s safe to say that the negative effects of the pandemic on the economy would have been a lot more significant.

Building smarter cities through technology

NECs contributions to India aren’t just limited to networking infrastructure. Smart city projects in Ahmedabad, Surat, and Thiruvananthapuram, for example, are being spearheaded by NEC. The company has helped authorities save money and improve efficiencies with projects like BRT (Bus Rapid Transit), and now it’s helping ease boarding processes in a post-pandemic world with contactless tech at certain airports (Varanasi, Pune, Vijaywada, Kolkata etc.).

Many of these cutting edge technologies are being developed at NEC’s global COEs in India. The R&D lab in Bengaluru is another great hub of innovation for NEC, helping develop innovative solutions to social infrastructure challenges in India and around the world. With cutting edge solutions being developed with technologies such as AI, blockchain, big data and so on, NEC is a committed partner to the Government of India and businesses in making India’s vision of Digital India a reality.

Over the last few years, NEC has been one of the key enablers of the digital transformation in the country, while also putting India on the global map for innovation. As President of NEC India Aalok Kumar stated in an interview given earlier this year, “India’s time as a global tech power is here” and the recent meeting of PM Modi and NEC’s Chairman proves that this is already in motion.

This is a partnered post.