Gaia Smart Cities: A Smart City Innovation

Gaia Smart Cities thinks through the Smart Cities concept from many different aspects, which are beyond technology, thus producing game-changing ideas for the clients. The firm furnishes IoT enabled monitoring and tracking services. Key products in this category include Gaia Poll– enabling real-time feedback collection from geographically dispersed locations, which has been adopted by multiple cities to collect citizen feedback about the cleanliness of Public and Community toilets; Gaia Insight– enabling Industrial Automation, which has been adopted by manufacturing, dairy and supply chain industry.
Additionally, Gaia is pioneering a new integrated Network of Networks – the Gaia Grid. A virtualisation platform operating over 2G, 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi and proprietary networks and will be the creation of an IoT Management Platform on the cloud. Gaia accomplishes complete solution for managing water with highly sensitive sensor system to read water meters and transmit the data wirelessly on a sensor network that it builds in partnership with certain telcos.
Gaia also works closely with the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) on Swachh Bharat Mission. As an integral part of the National Project Management Unit (PMU) of SBM, Gaia facilitated the design and development of pilot solutions for monitoring & evaluation, training & development, communication engagement, and capacity building of states and Urban Local Bodies (ULBs). It is now revamping the ICT solutions, and building tools to enhance the mission portal for managing the mission more effectively. The firm works with certain cities to help create their IEC strategy, and with some private townships to architect smart solutions.
Versatility is the Main Trait of Sumit
Dr. Sumit D Chowdhury, CEO & Founder of Gaia Smart Cities is an entrepreneur, business leader and an international thought-leader on telecom, electronics and information systems and solutions for Smart Cities. He considers success as a team work and Bipin Kumar, Co-Founder, Mayuri Naik, Neetika Chhabra, Aakash Iyer and a team of 20 members’ attribution is equally counted. Sumit is a B.Tech from IIT Kanpur and MS and Ph.D. in Urban Planning and management from Carnegie Mellon University. Sumit served as the Project Director for the Swachh Bharat Mission (PMU), Ministry of Urban Development, Govt. of India. He was the President of the Enterprise Business and CIO of Reliance Jio. Prior to that, he was a Vice President with IBM as Head of Consulting for Telecom, Utilities and Entertainment industries. He was also the CIO of Reliance Communications, Partner of KPMG and Managing Director and CEO of Bearing Point in Australia.
Mentioned roles have given him the opportunity to be recognized as one of the Top CIOs of the world. Sumit has been recently appointed as the Chairman of the Smart Cities Expert Forum of the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce for the year 2015-2016. He is also Professor of Smart Cities at the Carnegie Mellon University. He is an invited International expert on Smart Cities at TM Forum and the Brussels Sustainable Development by TERI and active industry speaker and authority on technology and management issues.
Sumit has been mentoring, angel funding, and incubating several start-up companies in diverse areas in India. His passion for technology and acute interest in urban solutions designs brings him to the intersection of using technology to solve real-life urban problems. And that is what Gaia is all about.
Challenges do excite Journey
Challenges are bound to come if you choose the path less trodden, but that is what makes the journey exciting. Sumit elaborating the journey, shares that “I am a firm believer in the systems thinking, and I believe things are interconnected. If you take right steps, it helps untangle not one, but many knots of difficulties. You need to have a strong resolving power to continuously measure, evaluate, learn and improve yourself – and that is what makes the journey memorable. When I look back, I can clearly see the way things fell in place, and that gives me the confidence to connect more dots and move ahead.”
Continuous & Unflagging Efforts Wins
There are many factors that have contributed to Sumit’s success – consistent hard-work and focus on the vision, collective team effort of the team members who not only bring in their skills but also positive energy into the work place, and constant support from family and friends.
Industries Should be Ready for Change
It is a competitive world today, and the industry scenario is quite fluid. Innovation drives continuous evolution of processes, and one should be able to envision that and be ready for change. Another important facet not to be overlooked is the strength of the ecosystem– the ecosystem partners play an instrumental role in driving the success of industry – therefore, Gaia  looks at bringing efficiencies in the end-to-end chain, rather than in any one link of the chain.
If you have a vision, be passionate about it, and put in all your efforts –there are no shortcuts to success, but going that extra mile is worth it.
Gaia as Urban Solutions Lab
Gaia aims to achieve thought leadership in the domain of smart cities, and offer a complete solution set for solving wide-area urban problems. Gaia’s idea is to have a set of readily implementable, relevant, scalable and above all, affordable solutions that can impact on society. Instead of doing it in a lab, team Gaia acts as an urban solutions lab that is out, working with the cities to identify and solve these issues.
“Past success, a capable and devoted team, strong partner and vendor support, and good wishes” – is what makes Sumit hopeful for success.

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