Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, ABB, SAP along with a host of other companies are expected to brainstorm for the next two years in bringing advanced technology solutions to enhance efficient urban infrastructure in Indian cities. Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the German-Indian Partnership of IT Systems (GRIP-IT) project, which will focus on the smart cities concept, is the first international project of Acatech.

Henning Kagermann, previously chief executive officer of SAP, is leading the GRIP-IT project. Honchos such as Anand Sivasubramaniam (TCS), Venkat-eswaran Narayanan (ABB) and Raguraman Kalyanaraman (Wipro) are expected to look at ways to help Indian cities use technology to deliver services to their burgeoning population in an efficient manner.

“It began when Prithviraj Chavan, the minister of state for science and technology, wrote a letter reiterating the need for cooperation between Germany and India. I was in SAP at that time. As I became the president of Acatech, we thought of bringing creative people together under an umbrella concept that is smart cities. There are problems with Indian cities and all of us can use technology to find solutions,” said Kagermann.

Acatech has done significant work in Germany and has worked on initiatives such as smart grids, embedded software in machinery and future needs of mobility. Kagermann said the acceptance of their recommendations has been quite high at nearly 80 per cent.

The present scope of work of smart cities would be to focus on intelligent computing infrastructures that use cutting-edge advances in cyber-physical systems, internet services and other frontiers of innovation to support the cities of tomorrow in India.

“Through workshops and symposiums, we expect that the thought leaders would delve upon topics related to smart cities. By bringing together Indian and German industry as well as academia together, we hope to arrive at some concrete proposals that will help Indian cities overcome the problems associated with rapid urbanisation,” said Kagermann.

Acatech officials said a study looking at innovation systems in India and Germany is being conducted by the Fraunhofer Institute to compare innovation landscapes and best-practice approaches to inter-cultural collaborations.