G2B with AmCham India

We had a Government to Business meeting this morning with collaboration of American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham India). This was held in Banga Bhavan Circular Road complex. We had with us Mr Dillon Bannerjee, Minister Counsellor for Commercial Affairs from the US Embassy in Delhi, Mr Ajay Singha, Executive Director, AmCham India, Mr Sanjeev Gupta MD Accenture Strategy, Mr Asif Ahmed of 3M, Mr Avinash Ramachandra of DELL, Mr Pawan Gupta of AECOM, Mr Samit Ray of United Technologies, IBM, Mr Rajul Mehrotra of IBM and others. On our side besides me, Mr Sudip Datta of ILFS, Mr RD Meena, Resident Commissioner and Mr Deepak Gupta of Transport Department were present.

We presented ways in which US Companies may partner with the four smart cities of West Bengal. There was detailed discussions and it was agreed that the companies would express their preference for one smart city or the other and that a meeting with the ULBs and Consultants of all the four smart cities would be organised in October itself.

I also highlighted that the opportunity in respect of the 6 theme townships may also be exploited since all of these high end towns would be sure to use smart solutions. I even suggested that like CII (Asansol), FICCI (Siliguri), BCCI (Kalyani), CREDAI (Baruipur) AmCham may also handhold any of the theme cities and especially Howrah (Dumurjala).

A picture by Deepak Gupta on my iPhone:

Just before the meeting with AmCham India

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I participated very briefly at Vigyan Bhavan a workshop on Public Spaces for All. I told Chairman HUDCO that we were doing great work on public spaces at Eco Park in New Town Kolkata. I met Chairman National Housing Bank there and proposed if NHB could form a partnership with Govt of West Bengal to help finance the investment plans of the six theme cities. I requested Transaction Advisor BUIDL to send a formal letter. I met Ms Nandita Chatterjee, Secretary MoHUPA too.

I discussed with Mission Director Smart Cities MoUD about the methodology to be adopted for evaluating the Smart City proposals.