New Delhi: YES BANK, India’s fourth largest private sector bank, announced the partnership with 10 leading smart cities in India to launch an industry-first ‘Collaboration-as-a –Service’ platform to address urban development challenges.
As a part of its newly launched YES SCALE Smart City Accelerator, the Bank is inviting startups from around the world to collaborate with technology leaders like Bosch and Dell EMC and work on problem statements provided by respective Smart cities viz. Gurugram, Chandigarh, Rajkot, Surat, Vadodara, Aurangabad, Nasik, Warangal, Karim Nagar and Puducherry.
Commenting on the development Rana Kapoor, MD & CEO, YES BANK said, “This is a significant step towards creating ‘Collaboration-as-a-service’ economy and re-looking at urbanization as an opportunity, not a problem. YES BANK’s cross-industry collaboration through YES SCALE Smart City accelerator will empower these cities with innovative solutions to seamlessly connect people, processes & devices and enable administrators to respond faster to citizen’s needs while also creating new revenue sources. The strategy is fully aligned with the national agenda of moving India from Fragile 5 to making India a USD 5 trillion economic superpower.”
Accelerator to Create Ecosystem to Help Startups
YES BANK’s YES SCALE Smart City accelerator has created an ecosystem to help startups test, develop and deploy their solutions across the cities and further scale across the country-
Technology Infrastructure Support
Bosch and Dell EMC Digital Cities will provide testing, development and deployment infra support to help startups implement their solutions
Digital Infrastructure
Cloud Credits, Analytics tools support from AWS and Google Cloud
PoC Support
With more than 85 per cent of India’s tech startups affected by non-paid PoCs, the program offers a support of INR 20 lakhs for PoC development during the program
Mentorship
50+ Technology and scale up experts across the world
Funding Option
Affiliate startups can raise equity funding of up to USD 1 mn through fund partners Artha Ventures, CIIE, Anthill, Unitus Ventures
Global Exposure
Global platforms like UK India Innovation Fund, New Energy Nexus are also supporting the ecosystem
Additionally, Bosch will also look at solutions to implement in their respective partner smart cities viz. Bhubaneshwar and Kochi Aravind Raman, Head of Strategy and Business Development at Bosch India said, “Bosch works very closely with the tech-startup ecosystem in India. Through this association with YES BANK, Bosch is excited to continue this journey of building innovative solutions for India’s cities; YES SCALE could connect us with the right startups so that speed and efficiency of assistance to startups can be improved.”
Commenting on the partnership, Ravinder Singh, Director, Cybersecurity, Digital Healthcare & Digital Cities, India Public Sector, DELL EMC, said, “Dell EMC is focused on creating value for Smart Cities by offering world-class IT Infrastructure products and solutions. Dell EMC is working closely with many Smart Cities globally and with startups for creating joint innovative solutions. We are proud to be associated with YES SCALE as Technology partner to help create next generation of niche solutions aimed at both Indian and Global Smart Cities”.
Challenges to be Addressed Identified
YES BANK’s partner Smart Cities have identified challenges unique to their administration to address through YES SCALE Smart City, like, citywide data collection & analytics using IoT, blockchain and AI, Development of Open Data toolkit, Smart Traffic & Parking Management using video analytics, IoT and sensors, Intelligent, Optimized Public Transit systems, Automated Grievance collection and Response management, Intelligent Waste Management solution including smart labels, tippers and waste maps, Metering & Monitoring water supply, Smart air pollution monitors and efficient converters, Sensors for automated assistance of physically impaired citizens and Centralized dashboards to map and monitor utilities etc.
