Cisco sets up India Advisory Board to tap business opportunities in Digital India

Cisco announced an ‘India Advisory Board’ comprising five industry leaders to advise the India leadership team on strategic matters and help the company tap new business opportunities in Digital India.

Cisco India Advisory Board will comprise Shobana Kamineni, executive vice chairman, Apollo Hospitals; Rajiv Kumar, former director, General of Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI); GK Pillai, former home secretary, Commerce Secretary, Government of India; Kiran Karnik, former president, NASSCOM; and R Seshasayee, executive vice chairman, Ashok Leyland.

Anil Menon, president, Smart+Connected Communities and deputy chief globalisation officer, Cisco will serve as the chairman of the India Advisory Board.

The India Advisory Board will offer Cisco executives counsel on future investments for country transformation and guide the company in addressing customer business priorities, Cisco said.

“To tap the potential opportunities emerging from the Digital India initiative there is an urgent need to develop a robust ecosystem that would support the development and deployment of technological innovations. Aligned with that vision, Cisco has undertaken a host of projects and pilots which are now materializing,” said Menon.

Cisco also announced an update on a series of initiatives launched in 2014:

IoT Innovation Hub

The company said the network infrastructure of the ‘IoT Innovation Hub’ set up in Bangalore in association with the Electronic City Industrial Association (ELCIA) is ready and Electronic System Design & Manufacturing (ESDM) companies including many startups have begun development and testing and production of electronic product prototypes for an IoT enabled smart city environment.

Cisco in association with ELCIA is providing the infrastructure and expertise required to develop IoE solutions and products like smart lighting, environmental sensing, video analytics based safety and surveillance system, license plate recognition, no- parking violation and wrong lane detection among others.

The project is being undertaken as part of the Cisco Smart+Connected Communities concept. The focus is on using the network to deploy digitally enabled transportation, healthcare, education, utilities, energy grid and real estate in a digitized India. The project will help further the government’s ‘Make in India’ vision by allowing local manufacturers to design solutions to address domestic demand for electronic hardware and save precious foreign exchange for India.

Additional 100 remote FIR kiosks will be deployed in Bangalore

Encouraged by the positive feedback on the pilot installation of the remote FIR Kiosk at Malleshwaram, the Bangalore city police has announced  that they intend to deploy 100 more kiosks in the city. Installed in November last year, the FIR Kiosk allows citizens to remotely file a police complaint or lodge an FIR without having to go to a police station irrespective of the jurisdiction where the incident has occurred. The ATM-like kiosks will be equipped with a Cisco TelePresence system with high-definition video and audio; a touch screen, virtual keyboard and collaboration technology, to allow citizens to register a complaint by launching a live collaboration session with a designated police officer in the city.

Ties up with Bajaj Electricals

Cisco has entered into a strategic alliance with Bajaj Electricals to jointly bid for government projects and develop, deploy and promote smart street-lighting solutions. Cisco will manage the software applications and networking aspects such as routers and wireless applications while Bajaj Electricals will focus on advanced LED technology to install and service the street-lights.

Smart city training module for Ministry of Urban Development

Cisco has developed a training module on smart cities for the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India. The module has four segments that cover the basics of smart cities, emerging trends and challenges in the segment to the role of technology in smart cities and how advanced, secure networks can help lay the foundation to connect city infrastructure, citizens and businesses. It offers a comprehensive guide to officers, bureaucrats and other stakeholders in the ministry as they action out government’s 100 smart cities vision. The training sessions have been created in the form of high quality videos which will be hosted by Cisco and made available to the ministry in March 2015.