CII’s Innovation Summit to explore home-grown solutions for smart cities

The Confederation of Indian Industry’s (CII) ‘11th India Innovation Summit’ will focus on agricultural innovation, home- grown solutions for smart cities and ‘Make in India’ a job creation engine.

Kris Gopalakrishnan, Chairman, India Innovation Summit and co-founder Infosys, told reporters that the summit is an ideal platform for the industry to explore the dynamic entrepreneurship environment in the country in terms of its opportunities and challenges. This year’s summit will be held on August 6 and 7 at Bengaluru.

Justifying for selecting Bengaluru, Gopalakrishnan said: “The city legitimately can claim to be the innovation capital of the country. In a recent ranking of cities where innovation flourishes, city is ranked 15th as the most ‘Innovative Cities’ in the World.”

“As innovation plays a key role in progress, economic growth and job creation. This year we are looking at how innovation and start-ups can play a bigger role in national priorities,” he further added.

I Vijaykumar, Co-Founder and CTO, Crayon Data Pte, said the summit provides a comprehensive round up of major national initiatives, covering topics such as agricultural innovations, smart cities, Swachh Bharat, Make in India, financial inclusion, integrated transport systems and regional start-up systems.

“This event captures the mood, spirit and action in public and private spheres to realise the grandiose national dream of equitable growth and global leadership,” he added.

Shekar Vishwanathan, Chairman, CII Karnataka State Council, said: “The summit, since its inception in 2005, has played a critical role in creating a visible platform for discussing strategies imperative for the growth of the economy.”

“The presence of vibrant entrepreneur ecosystem is one of the key features and there is a major shift in the start-up ecosystem in India in the last couple of years and majority of them focus on India as a market and create solutions to the unique problems of rural India,” he explained.

Amit Laroya, Managing Director, 3M India Ltd, said this year too the summit will feature CII-3M Student Challenge. The challenge is designed to encourage inspiring ideas from young innovators aged up to 30 years.

“The challenge is looking for innovative ideas with a social relevance under the themes productivity, sustainability and disruptive innovations. The top three ideas will be felicitated and winners will receive cash prizes to build on their ideas,” he added.