The Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC), a township adjacent to Pune, has awarded a US$70 million (Rs500 crore) project contract.
The comprehensive project is expected to cover aspects like smart surveillance, smart parking and traffic management as well as an integrated command and control centre and social media analytics.
Smart Cities are an important part of Indian business and this takes the TCV (total contract value) of the six smart city projects being worked on by the firm on to a little over US$140 million (Rs1000 crore) over the next five-six years.
The ICT company is already working on smart city projects in Kanpur, Gandhinagar, Nashik and Jaipur. It had earlier worked on implementation in Jabalpur as well.
The PCMC project will be implemented over one year, followed by an operation and maintenance contract for five years, the company said on Thursday. The company started focusing on the India market a little over two years ago. It’s government projects currently form about half of its total India revenue.
Almost 50% of this comes from digital, and the company has won deals worth US$300 million in the first six months of the ongoing fiscal year. In comparison, digital comprises about 39% of the company’s overall revenue.
Delivery for digital projects is different from IT projects. After working on large transformation projects in India, the aim is to take them to other countries like Bangladesh which are spending heavily on infrastructure.
The Indian business — which spans segments including telecom, e-commerce and banking — grew 29% year-on-year and currently contributes about 4% to its overall revenue, as of the second quarter of the current financial year.
The aim is to offer much-improved services through ICT-led transformation, which will boost the overall infrastructure in the city, and also help in establishing a digital ecosystem for rendering seamless smart city experience, the Municipal Commissioner at PCMC stated.
The PCMC project is among the largest Smart City contracts awarded and is a more comprehensive and end-to-end initiative than others focused only on specific aspects like traffic management or surveillance.
Through this engagement with the ICT firm’s consortium, the Pune government aims to fulfil its vision of transforming Pimpri Chinchwad with the use of cutting-edge technologies.
Pune Pushing a Smart City Agenda
In September 2019, OpenGov Asia reported that the Smart Cities Mission (SMC) organised the Smart Cities Mission Technology Showcase in Pune, for start-ups to present tech solutions to improve civic infrastructure.
The SCM was set up under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, to drive economic growth and improve the quality of life for people residing in 100 cities across the country.
Its aim is to enable local area development and harness technology, especially technology that leads to Smart outcomes.
The project’s strategic components of area-based development are city improvement (retrofitting), city renewal (redevelopment), and city extension (greenfield development).
Pune is emerging as a promising tech start-up destination in India. In 2018, the city offered the most tech job openings in the country after Bengaluru and Delhi.
According to an industry expert, Pune has an active start-up ecosystem in software, manufacturing technology, and cleantech. It is a small city compared to other Indian metro cities and has historically been a centre for education and research. Today, it is also one of the top manufacturing hubs in India.
