Siemens interested in providing smart city solutions, meets Naidu

Technology major Siemens seems quite upbeat about government’s Smart City Mission and Housing for all Mission and wants to contribute in a major way to these initiatives by partnering with the government. Company is already working in this space and mulling providing integrated solutions for smart cities across the country. In line with that Siemens AG’s President and CEO Joe Kaesar and HDFC’s head Dipak Parekh met Venkaiah Naidu, Minister of Urban Development and Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation and discussed about the mode of future partnership for the smart city mission. Team of UNO and UNDP has also accompanied the two czars to chalk out the future strategy for the crucial missions.

Delegation discussed possible areas of involvement in the Smart City Mission. In the meeting Kaeser said that Siemens presence is continuously growing in India over the last 45 years and evinced keen interest to further deepen partnership in India’s growth story in the context of new initiatives in urban sector. “Given the experience and expertise of Siemens, the company is in a position to offer integrated solutions to potential smart cities covering the areas of urban infrastructure, energy, security, waste management and governance platforms and ranging from planning to execution,” Kaeser said. “Company has the ideas, technologies and identified financing partners in Deutsche Bank and KFW to assist the potential smart cities,” he added. 

During the meeting Venkaiah Naidu advised that Siemens and ministry official should hold further discussion on the mission and evolve a thorough template for smart city to provide integrated solutions so that it can be implemented across the country. Importantly UNDP’s resident representative Yuri Afansiev discussed about new areas of cooperation in this mission and gave suggestion that Pre-Fabricated housing technologies would be quite handy in meeting large scale demand of houses as aimed by the government. Ministry is quite amused by this idea and minister has shown inclination to take up this idea a pilot project in some cities.