Bangalore, July 2, 2014: Cisco today announced a strategic tie-up with the Electronics City Industries Association (ELCIA), India, to develop Asia’s first end-to-end ‘Internet of Things (IoT) Innovation Hub’ in the country’s IT city of Bangalore.
Cisco said the collaboration will help set the foundation for a new ecosystem to help Electronic System Design & Manufacturing (ESDM) companies as well as other companies of the electronic city of Bangalore engaged in IoT product development.
Set up in 1992, the ELCIA was established way back in 1992 to facilitate the development of required infrastructure for the growth of the industry. Cisco said in a press release that the Association had been chosen for the project as it was the only brown field ESDM cluster in the country that had received an in-principal approval for a financial grant from the Government of India to spur innovation in product design and manufacturing.
As part of this effort, Cisco will help provide the network infrastructure and expertise for testing and production of electronic product prototypes for an IoT enabled smart city environment. Through the ‘Living Lab’, ESDM start-ups and other electronic city companies can build solutions for City Infrastructure Management (CIM) including Smart Parking, Smart CCTV Surveillance, Smart Street Lighting, Smart Water Management/Leak Detection and Community Messaging.
The project will utilise the Cisco Smart+Connected City WiFi solution that will help enable community WiFi services and allow access to public utility offerings. ELCIA will also embed Cisco network equipment comprising of access points, routers, switches, and other required hardware and software applications that will be connected to the smart city’s fibre-optic backbone network.
The first phase of this smart city project will be rolled out in Electronics City and will serve as a replicable model for the rest of Bangalore as well as other cities in India, across the region and other emerging markets. Participating companies would gain access to boot strap funding for their ventures under Cisco’s IoT Innovation Fund, provided there is a strong idea for new IoT product / application development with a commercially viable business case, as well as a chance to participate in the global Cisco IoT Challenge.
This project is being undertaken as part of the Cisco Smart+Connected Communities concept that places technology at the heart of economic development and better quality of life in modern cities. The focus is on using the network to deploy digitally enabled transportation, healthcare, education, utilities, energy grid and real estate in cities.
Anil Menon, President, Smart+Connected Communities and Deputy Chief Globalisation Officer said, “India has always been at the core of our emerging market strategy, and we see this arrangement as a tremendous opportunity for us to demonstrate our global expertise in IoT enabled technology. According to our IoE value index, the potential value at stake in India is $34.8 billion, and this initiative underscores our commitment to build an effective ecosystem to enable Indian startups help realize this potential to the fullest, in turn creating employment opportunities and contributing to economic growth through innovation.”
Image Credit: ECIA
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