Today, it is not the countries that are competing against each other but cities, says Sridhar Gadhi of Quantela
HYDERABAD, Apr 12 (The CONNECT) – Smart City is no longer just a concept, it is a trillion-dollar market with an estimated year-on-year returns of of 23%, said Sridhar Gadhi, Founder & Executive Chairman, USA-based Quantela.
Smart city is a huge opportunity to explore. It is an industry where every dollar and every minute that you invest will make a huge impact on the society, he said addressing the 3-day Global Impact Summit at Woxsen University, at Kamkole near here. It is estimated to be US$ 1.3 trillion in market size by 2025, he said.
He explained that though cities occupied just 2% of the surface area of the world they house nearly 50% of the world population. And 2.5 billion people are expected to move to urban areas by 2050. Cities create 18% of the economy of our country. Cities are responsible for 75% of the greenhouse gases emission, he said. But cities contribute 80% of the global GDP, he said.
Today, it is not the countries that are competing against each other but cities, he said citing the recent online tussle between Hyderabad and Bangalore. It is important that cities grow economically to provide services to citizens. “Quantela provides Traffic & Safety digital infrastructure solutions to the UAE with records 95% accuracy and City Solution to the US, both these solutions are a Self-Sustainable, putting no burden on the government or the society. Governments can come up with such self-sustainable models and provide huge impact to society.” Sridhar said.
Quantela website says the company was founded in 2015 as a simple dashboard company, working with other technology partners to help cities digitize their urban infrastructure. “Over time, our dashboard evolved into an award-winning, custom-built smart city platform, supporting 100+ smart city projects across the Americas, EMEA, CIS, India and APJ markets,” it says.
Sridhar recalled how businesses sniggered at him when he said that he was working for city improvement. People used to complain of working with the Government, he said. Quantela is into automating and optimising urban infrastructure operations.
“At Quantela it is all about making technology that has a meaningful outcome, that is impactful to the society, environment and the economy.”
Speaking at the roundtable discussion on ‘Emerging Technologies & The Future of Business’, Shiv Mehta, Author of Protocols of Money & Alumnus, NYU Stern School of Business, USA said that “The biggest innovation that blockchain will bring about is the building a social contract i.e. Digital Money. Many countries will legalise it soon.
Badita Florin, Founder -Corruption Kills, Romania, who was a panellist in the discussion addressed how the transformation of Job Markets. “Emerging technology will bring about a lot of transformation, it is infact disrupting many sectors and by 2030 top jobs will be impacted by emerging technologies.” He pointed out that “in the last 2 to 3 years we have created more data than we have in the last 50 years. The need of the hour is to have more Data Scientists. I think India can be the front runner and leverage the field of Computer Science to build the talent pool.”
Anees Merchant, EVP – Global Growth and Client Success, Course5i, India and Naidu Darapaneni, Founder, MeraEvents, also participated in the Round Table that was moderated by Dr. Kiran Ravulakollu, Dean – School of Technology, Woxsen University.
