The government’s thrust on creation of smart cities across the country with manifold benefits for the citizens has thrown open the door for large scale adoption of technology to create the digital infrastructure which will deliver all kinds of public services. India has one of the largest and fastest growing urban population in the world with close to 590 million to be residing in urban areas by 2030. Cisco, the global technology giant which has a core focus on developing smart cities globally with projects also in India is geared up meet the requirements of a larger scale, said
Dinesh Malkani, president, Cisco India and SAARC in an interview with PP Thimmaya. Excerpts:

How do you see the strategic intent of the government on smart city projects?

We have done 90 smart city projects across the world. It was very encouraging when the new government came and said we need to smarten our cities. I believe that future of competition is not between countries but it is between cities. When you want to attract talent, skills, investment, choice is not sometimes between countries but which city we can get all of these things. Here, smart city plays an important part. Today, when one thinks of smart city, the focus is around features such as safety, digitised infrastructure availability, traffic management. Also, it is not just the question of cities as campuses also want to become smarter.

I believe we as a company have the right experience. The question is how do we scale. The good thing is that smart cities are moving from just strategic intent and things are moving from the ground. Today, we have created a very good ecosystem and our $40 million fund for India to invest in startups will provide us good technologies. This can be combined with what we are doing.

Who will be the Cisco partners in implementing the smart city projects?

At the end of the day, when you want to get a full solution in play, one needs a master system integrator. We partner with companies like L&T and IL&FS. Secondly as a technology player we have already invested in 25 companies in India who add a lot of value. The completeness will eventually come with a combination of people who provide infrastructure, that is the piece we want to expand. Now the scale is unprecedented but at the same time I do not want to mix between scale and quality.

What will be the role of governments in these projects?

The governments are engaging the right consultants and plays a role in getting the framework and strategy right. The creation of ecosystem is something that will mature over a period of time. Once we know what we are trying to solve, then you know who are the players needed to stitch them together. One of things cities need to do is never to do things in silos. The government will have to do some planning in setting up the platform and framework. Many states are starting with the concept of safe city with the next logical step being digital infrastructure so that people can access data. Once we build the core infrastructure it can be reused.

Will Cisco be engaged in both brownfield and greenfield projects?

We have done work in both. We have been taking a advisory and consulting role in drawing up the IT blueprint. If there is good planning, one can keep adding things on top o . That is unprecedented in any part of the world.

Today, India is one of best testbeds for any emerging market in terms of scale, geographical spread and the ability test ones products. Our R&D centre here also allows us to do rapid prototyping and proof of concept. When these solutions go into deployment and the learning we capture allows us to quickly innovate on the solutions.  Further, we also need skilled people in every corner of the country to implement these projects, where we have expanded the talent pool.

What is the future roadmap for Cisco on the smart city projects?

It took us many years to get ready. I believe that competition between cities will intensify. The learnings with initial deployment has been fantastic. We have experience in every department and now it is scale time. Also it is not the question of just smart cities but also smart villages. We have done solutions in areas of remote healthcare and education. We are ready with our innovations to work on smart village projects.