Jaipur gets Cisco's first Lighthouse City status in South Asia

JAIPUR, INDIA: Jaipur gets the status of being the first ‘Lighthouse City’ in South Asia and hence joins the league of Cisco Lighthouse Cities globally such as Hamburg, Barcelona and Adelaide.

As competition between cities for talent, business, investment and tourism increases, city leaders see a growing role for technology to enable the development of communities that champion social, environmental and economic sustainability. The Jaipur Development Authority (JDA) has chosen to develop smart city infrastructures that will improve the efficiency and quality of services received by its 3.5 million residents and over 40 million tourists who visit the city every year.

Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje said, “It is a step towards realizing the vision of ‘Digital Rajasthan’. Cisco has chosen Jaipur because of the rapid transformation and modernization the city authorities have undertaken over the last couple of years and have actually implemented citizen centric solutions ahead of its time, across the city."

The Lighthouse City engagement will be enabled through a joint working group, which will focus on deploying next generation technologies to impact citizens and society.

Dinesh Malkani, President Cisco India and SAARC said, “Jaipur, as a Lighthouse City, will showcase to the world what’s possible when visionary city leaders and urban planners design and build 21st century cities connected by a digital infrastructure."

Cisco has also collaborated with Qualcomm Technologies, General Electrical and 3M India to launch of the Innovation Centre in the city of Jaipur. The Innovation Centre will be housed and operated by Genpact, and will help accelerate co-innovation of Internet of Everything (IoE) based solutions.

The Innovation Centre will team up with startups, developers, government agencies, and academic communities who share the same goal of bringing innovative ideas to life and jointly accelerating development of IoE solutions on a global scale.

3M India MD, Amit Laroya said, "Connected by our common technology platforms, 3M's diverse and unique products in the areas of Public Safety & Security, Smart Transportation, Smart Grids and Smart buildings can contribute substantially to offer practical solutions to urban problems."

"Qualcomm is committed to the advancement of smart cities in India and is pleased to be working with Cisco in order to help transform infrastructure and address complex challenges that cities like Jaipur in India are facing," said Kiva Allgood, President, Smart Cities and Industrial IoT, Qualcomm Intelligent Solutions. "The role of wireless technologies, edge processing and machine learning can help empower such cities to make them more efficient, livable and sustainable."

Genpact President and CEO Mr. Tiger Tyagarajan said, "We develop IoE applications for industrial asset performance using analytics combined with our disruptive Lean Digital approach that facilitates the effective use of digital technologies all the way from the front, middle and back end of our clients’ operations."