Smart Cities And IoT to Offer Big Business in India

By:  Amit Singh, Co Founder Yitsol, Technology Solution Provider

You may find interesting to know that Smart cities is the necessity because world's growing population is moving to urban centers. In India alone, driven by migration of people from rural areas for better employment opportunities and economic prospects. Urban areas are expected to house 40% of India's population and contribute 75% of India's GDP by 2030.

To sustain this rapid urbanization, cities requires comprehensive development of physical, institutional, social and economic infrastructure. In my understanding ongoing Smart City objective is aligned to the same, and is enabling cities with core infrastructure, quality life to its citizens, clean sustainable city environment, and smart city technology. Improving the overall quality of life of people by enabling city area development, and leveraging technology.

While provision of infrastructure is important to ensure quality of life, the sustainability economic growth of the city cannot be ignored. Smart city investments and new smart city technology has the full potential to boost “Smart Economy”. Smart cities would use technology, information and data to improve their city infrastructure services not just to improve the quality of life, but to also create employment and enhance incomes for all.

Smart city have great potential to fuel economic growth through direct investments in developing smart cities, and indirect opportunities created by a developed smart city, Organizations involved or operating from smart cities can expect an increase in their profits, sustainability, and efficiency, causing a boost to the economy.

According to Navigant Research, the global market for smart city solutions and services is expected to grow from $40.1 billion in 2017 to $97.9 billion in 2026. So, we can expect a good ecosystem between tech companies and the smart city authorities to ride this smart economy.

Socially aware integrated command control center of a smart city enables more inclusive city operations bringing a perfect blend of social, economical and digital management of the city. Creating various monetization opportunities for the city authorities and citizens. I can think of which directly get benefitted, are as follows:

You will wonder that digitally enabled bike rental service itself creates jobs, and money flow in s smart city.

Good Wi-Fi connectivity in a smart city boosts the tourist industry by helping visitors connect more richly with the city.

Businesses will be able to leverage the data being collected by the smart city to better understand their target demographic and the space itself to provide a more customer centric service.

The tourism industry can take advantage of the data produced by their visitors to help identify patterns in wait times and mass-transit delays.

According to a research the average city dweller spends 15% of their driving time sat in congestion and 20% looking for a parking space. Imagine the potential of revenue generation and citizen comfort brought by smart parking and smart transport systems can bring. Optimizing travel with smart traffic lights or even using smart, self-driving cars will reduce wasted time and energy. Globally, large cities could save $800 billion annually by simply installing smart transport systems.

Big data and IoT enabled socially aware integrated command control center helps firefighters; police, infrastructure planners, and emergency responders improve service delivery.

Smart city economic growth story doesn’t stops here; smart cities would include huge opportunity in terms of the demand for affordable homes. Creating a big push around the city economics. Evolution of these smart cities will push the demand of office spaces as well as hotels, in addition to service apartments and shopping malls.
So, we should look forward for not just smart living but also for the catalyst of smart  economics powered by “Smart Cities”