‘Future ICT Forum for Sustainable Cities’ was held on the 20th March 2023 at Hotel Conrad, Bengaluru
Bengaluru: This year the ‘Future ICT Forum for Sustainable Cities’ was held on the 20th March 2023 at Hotel Conrad, Bengaluru amassing over 200 delegates from India and Europe who came together for a sustainable, digital and collaborative future with information and communication technologies. The forum provided a platform to industry leaders, global experts and visionaries to discuss revolutionary ideas and projects that are paving the road to a sustainable world.
The forum featured renowned speakers from Beckn Open Collective, Protean, Aracadis, Bosch, NRW Global Business, Bayer etc. Across the various informative sessions covering talks on spacetech, new mobility solutions, gig economy, healthtech etc., the forum shed light on the role of information and communication technologies in shaping sustainable cities of the future. The sessions provided attendees to interact with one another in informative and informal settings, to promote in-depth technical interactions, exchange of opinions, and networking.
Shri. Nandan Nilekani, Chairman & Co-Founder, Infosys & Founding Chairman of UIDAI (Aadhaar) graciously gave his time to the forum and presented the Keynote Speech, highlighting the Digital Public infrastructure. “The digital world has moved to an enormous space in the last 25 years… and if digital is going to be so important to us, we have to think about the architecture of the digital infrastructure… we have to make sure there is interoperability, where we create an inclusive society where more people can participate.”
The Consul General of France in Bangalore, Thierry Berthelot addressed the gathering conveying strong partnerships between India & France. “There is a strong mutual interest between France & India to build a strong bilateral partnership in the digital field.”
“ I can’t overstate how important it is to find sustainable and technological solutions in India… Great things are surely ahead.” said Friedrich Birgelen, Deputy Consul General at the German Consulate in Bangalore
Suresh Sethi, Managing Director & CEO at Protean eGov Technologies said, “When we look at creating any eGovernance technology at scale… It is important to address the technology design and architecture of any Digital Public Infrastructure.”
“As of 2022, out of $100 billion, $64 Billion has been raised by Bangalore startups alone… Karnataka is set to become the top no.1 tech startup hub by 2030.
” highlighted Sanjeev Kumar Gupta, CEO of Karnataka Digital Economy Mission
Smita Negi, Vice President of IT Operations at Bayer India spoke on the importance of ‘ Science for a better life’ “We support 7 Sustainable Development Goals.. Our innovative products support efforts to overcome the major and aging global population.”
The deliberations from this Forum will serve as recommendations to the government, potentially impacting policy decisions pertaining to ICT in urban development.