Innovative start-ups can lead the way towards smart cities

All India Institute of Local Self-Government partnered with Smart City Gwalior, Bilaspur Smart City, and Dream Hatcher Incubation Centre to organise the twenty-fifth edition of the webinar series titled ‘E-Dialogues’. The topic of the webinar was “Addressing Urban Issues with Innovation”. Abhishek Pandey, Editor, Urban Update, moderated the webinar and said that it would try to address and understand how innovation has been, and continues to improve governance and quality of life of people in cities and how giving space to startups can give a new push to cities to achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs).
The first speaker, Kakul Mishra, National Programme Head, National Institute of Urban Affairs, said that the topic is pertinent during these COVID-19 times and has showed how innovations are the backbone of recovery. Innovation is no longer an isolated event. Innovations hold the potential to effectively address the requirements of urban governance and highlight how urban is a multitude of sectors in one sector, and therefore requires all aspects to come together for it to function properly. She talked about the National Urban Digital Mission (NUDM), launched in February 2021. Its goal is to “use technology as a backbone to foster innovation and contextual solution to address various challenges of the urban sector across India.” The platform is trying to create shared digital infrastructure which can enable cities to build capacity by meeting guidance framework. “The aim is to bring transformative power of collaboration and innovation into the urban domain,”said Mishra.
Under the NUDM, there is key focus on engaging with startups and it is their goal to collaborate with over 500 startups by the end of 2025. Urban development and quality livability in cities, Mishra believes, can be attained through a proper model of partnership and collaboration, which simultaneously leverages needs
and opportunities.
Deepti Raj, Senior Project Associate, World Resources Institute India, started her presentation by mentioning how the COVID-19 pandemic prompted digital adoption to happen, which highlighted the importance of start-ups in terms of bringing services within reach of people. However, the disparity in access to internet in urban India also surfaced during the pandemic, she said, while citing reports. Digital literacy, socio-economic divide and gender divide in the world of internet counters the expectation of height of development in cities. She said that cities now have start-ups, innovations, technologies, government regulation orientation, all working towards improving quality of life of people in cities. However, low-income group and other marginalized people rarely are part of that ‘development’. She said that the government administration and start-ups need to take a step back and rethink how they can make their services all-inclusive, for an urban space does not consist only of high-income and middle-income groups. Whatever an innovation is trying to do to better quality of life of people in cities, there is need to address the question on how, and more importantly, for whom. Right questions can bring the challenges of making a service all-inclusive to the forefront and can therefore be addressed optimally. Her presentation included innovations and start-ups in urban India which have tried to bridge the gap of privilege for different groups of people in cities, such as community specific kitchens in Kerala’s model, and doorstep delivery of services by Delhi government for people who do not have access to internet.
Group Captain Y Srinivas (Retd), Former Manager at Price Waterhouse Coopers, Bilaspur Smart City Corporation, talked about an initiative of the Atal Tinkering Lab named ‘Moksha’, which has been launched to prevent further pollution of River Arpa because of the ritual of spreading ashes after incineration of a dead body. The Moksha project created a small box with an alum filter fitted inside, which costs only `1500. When ashes are collected after burning a dead body, it is to be put into the box. When the box is immersed in a water body, water enters through the porous medium. However, when it comes out of the box, it is filtered, thereby not polluting the river at all. The ash left in the box is very rich in phosphorous, which works as an excellent organic manure. Although internationally acclaimed, this project is still struggling to find its place in India. He said that innovations like the Atal Krishi Mitra and Moksha, which can be beneficial for multiple sectors at one time, need to reach society soon.
Pandey then asked Vinay Achantani, Founder of Genie delivery services, about his start-up and how different it is from other existing delivery platforms. Vinay talked about how it originated last year when grocery shops were unable to sustain themselves due to the lockdowns. The start-up was launched to bring such small shops at the consumer’s doorstep and it envisions an economy where maximum number of such shops are available online for people to access their products. Their app includes delivery of products like groceries, fruits and vegetables, cooked food, and raw meat in Bilaspur. They are looking forward to expand their app’s reach to other cities like Raipur.
Nisha Niranjan, the next speaker, founded VN Organics in 2020 with Vikas Pataiya in Madhya Pradesh. Nisha said that this start-up is a research project and it is looking for solutions that can bring a revolution in the food industry in terms of health. She mentioned that any and every kind of medicine has some kind of side effect. People in urban spaces find themselves more exposed to health hazards due to various types of pollution, crowd, increased screen time, etc. Nisha said that the start-up is striving to create healthy food-related solutions which can address the nutrition needs of the human body and shield it from illnesses. She mentioned that VN Organics is currently working on mushrooms, which is the future of food as it is the only food that has the potential of growing on Mars. They are working on mushrooms that have medicinal benefits and can cure toxicity and any additive damage done to a body, and also reduce the ageing process.
Abhishek mentioned how innovations by the Atal Tinkering Lab can really add to the quality of life. He said that the Moksha project can add value to the Namami Gange Mission. Thus, Urban Update resolves to publish pieces on such incubation works and innovations, so that urban local bodies can connect with such labs and start-ups to introduce concerned products in the urban spaces. He reiterated the speakers’ focus on collaborative approach and taking end consumer into account while running a start-up on ground, especially those which can further the urban local bodies’ efforts to improve quality of life and achieve SDGs.
Srinivas, during the conclusion, suggested that platforms should focus on innovative start-ups in tier 3 cities right now, because those cities can act as a place for test-runs and evolution of those innovations according to challenges and needs, thereby perfecting them along the way from bottom to top.

Cities now have start-ups, innovations, technologies, government regulation orientation, all working towards improving quality of life of people in cities.

Deepti Raj
Senior Project Associate, WRI India