BW Businessworld Kick-Starts 3-Day Flagship Conclave ‘Envision 2018’ In Goa

BW Businessworld on Monday (24 September) started off with its flagship event ‘Envision’ in Goa.

Envision is a three-day conference, which will bring together industry stalwarts, leaders, and innovators from the smart cities, education, HR and Urban Banking sectors. The leaders from the domain will get together to discuss insightful tracks completely focused on innovation, growth, and ideas in their respective sectors.

Day 1 of the summit which is focussed on building sustainable smart cities, today started off with special address from Annurag Batra, Editor-in-Chief BW Businessworld, NSN Murty, Partner & Leader, PWC, Rajesh Jumar, DIG of Police, Goa, Vikas Sharma, Presales Consultant, Nutanix India, Kamal Kashyap, Country Head, PS & Govt, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Vinit Goenka, Governing Council, CRIS, Ministry of Railways, followed by a video message by Suresh Prabhu, Ministry of Industry and Commerce Government of India.

In their address, all the leaders shed light on the importance of smartification of cities which will reap digital dividends.

Annurag Batra, who is the brain behind this initiative of BW Businessworld opened the discussion by explaining to the audience the ideology behind the event. He explained that this property will grow like a child, every passing year doing bigger and better.

“Technology is changing the way we work. Tech is an enabler. It is not eating away jobs but it is creating new jobs. Changes are happening across every sector. Media, Ad, Entertainment is all merging with media. Branded content is becoming bigger and bigger. Technology is making sure that this is happening.”

Prabhu corroborated the point by congratulating BW Businessworld for this initiative. “We at the government are generating new ideas every day. I hope you give new ideas every day which will benefit you and the country,” he stated in his video message.

India has been keenly working on PM’s vision and mission of smart cities. However, post-2014 the idea of a smart city is changing and good entrepreneurship is slowing taking over and redefining the smart cities experience. A lot of start-ups are coming up who are leveraging technologies in the best possible ways in order to create a safe, human-friendly, smart and intelligent city.

“India would like to go beyond what the world is doing. We are building on our biggest strengths. That is start-ups. They can use their technology to deliver fantastic results.

Smart Cities can open up the foray into startups and we can resolve our basic issues. Smart Cities are like a marketplace for start-ups,” said Murty.

Entrepreneurs today are thinking about smart cities in terms of disruption and reshaping the way a city functions. Robotics and AI are major tools for the same. Like grass root incubators in the US to smart hubs in Singapore or be it a tier 2 mosquito free city in India. A smart city is all about building an infrastructure where humans and machines co-exist in an easy to live environment.

“Technology brings in small amounts of happiness. If there is an informed decision making its easier to contemplate and would help easily to resolve the issue,” Goenka commented to conclude the inaugural session.

Day 2 of Envision will see the industry leaders from the HR and Education community where they will discuss the roadmap from the right education to creating job-ready talent. The day will open with a special address by Umang Bedi, President, Daily Hunt.