Bhubaneswar, Feb. 27: Experts are of the opinion that implementation of the smart city project here and in other selected cities will encourage young entrepreneurs to set up their start-up units in these places.
This came up during a discussion of electronics and Information Technology professionals on "Enterprise Opportunities in Smart Cities" held on the concluding day of Infocom: Advantage Odisha 2016, a business and technology leadership conference, an initiative of The Telegraph , today.
"The smart cities will give birth to a range of opportunities, mainly in the field of information and communication technology. In the smart city, there will be a hunger for smart initiatives such as dynamic mobile applications and e-governance projects. The young entrepreneurs could come up and help the administration build the smart city," said Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation commissioner Krishan Kumar.
The state government is already helping the young entrepreneurs interested to set up micro, small and medium enterprises in the state and now is the need for the government to come up with a dynamic start-up and open data policy, suggested the experts here.
"There will be a huge need of citizen-centric smart services in the smart city project. Service will be another industry where the young entrepreneurs could make headway. There will be a need of architecture-based approach," said Kumar.
Rupinder Singh, director, business development, Cisco India and Saarc, elaborated on the need to develop more citizen-centric digitised services. He said: "To get smarter, we need to develop a system that will be able to integrate all services on one portal. There is a need to co-relate all departments where each will perform their individual duties to come up with a broad solution," said Singh.
As part of the smart city project, Bhubaneswar will have to improve the traffic management system, social safety, street lighting, environment and pollution, waste management and parking facilities. "Each of these field needs smart solution, data collection and compilation, for which there is need for a huge workforce," said Singh.
Dhirendra Kumar Khandewal, managing director, E-Square System and Technologies, said the smart city would be a billion-dollar industry that would generate huge revenue and a pool of opportunities for everyone, especially the IT industries. Khandewal advised the city administration to learn from international cities such as Boston and Singapore.
Rudra Shankar Shatapathy, group managing director and CEO of In2IT Technologies said smart city could prove a boon for the small and medium enterprises. He gave the example of smartphones and their allied billion-dollar industries.
"We evolved from mobile phones to smartphones that gave opportunities to companies such as WhatsApp and others to grow billion-dollar industries. Similarly, we are going to be in the smart city, which will help begin a range of sub industries from top to bottom," said Shatapathy.
The experts stressed on the importance of creating a state-of-the-art infrastructure for IT companies to set up their firms in the city. At present, Bhubaneswar has an Infocity and is in process of getting another Infovalley on the city outskirts. There is also a proposal to set up a data centre in the city.
