CII inks pacts with Hitachi, Siemens for smart city initiative

The industry body also hopes to finalise a similar agreement with US-based Cisco Systems by the end of the month

Industry body CII today signed agreements with Hitachi India Ltd and Siemens Ltd to set up a National Mission that will help realise government's vision of creating 100 Smart Cities in the country.

Under the pact, CII will establish a National Mission for Smart Cities -- a platform comprising industry leaders and experts to provide "policy advocacy and thought leadership" to government and other stakeholders.

The forum will engage with central & state governments as well as other public authorities to promote the Smart City initiative, CII said.

CII said it also hopes to finalise a similar agreement with US-based Cisco Systems by the end of the month.

"The idea is to help form consortiums to enable Smart Cities happen, working with the state governments to see how we can bring expertise and knowledge from these countries to India to enable the vision of creating a 100 Smart Cities.

"We do believe that we would be able to get much more expertise through this MoU in terms of forming consortiums with Japan and Germany," CII Director General Chandrajit Banerjee said.

The MoUs were signed here in the presence of DIPP Secretary Amitabh Kant and Japanese Ambassador to India Takeshi Yagi.

Industry partners will support the Mission by generating ideas promoting Smart City concepts amongst stakeholders.

They will also prepare and undertake demonstration projects, prepare prototypes to showcase best practices in various fields related to Smart City development.