Outgoing Reliance Jio Infocomm executive Sumit Chowdhury to launch Smart City so

lutions firm
Via The Economic Times | Feb 13, 2015
Sumit Chowdhury, the outgoing president of Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio Info
comm, is starting a new venture called GAIA Smart Cities, a full service M2M tel
ecom solutions and services provider. Chowdhury is planning to merge three India
-based companies operational in the Smart City and Machine to Machine (M2M) spac
e. Chowdhury is currently serving his notice period in Jio. "There are three com
panies which are operational and I am brining all of them together. We have got
the agreement to join them together and make a much larger company. I have come
to do the integration of these companies," Chowdhury said, adding that he has do
ne angel investment in all of these companies, including in the to-be formed GAI
ASmartCity. Chowdhury however declined to share the names of these three compani
es and the funding amount. "Transaction has not completed yet," he said, adding
that the venture is also seeking more funding from some global investors. All th
e three companies were founded in India but have global operations. The GAIA Sma
rt Cities, through all the three ventures, has already got eight customers in th
e country from verticals such as telecom, automotive, entertainment, defence wea
rables and public utilities verticals.
"We have got multiple customers who are already using IoT and M2M solutions not
just at city level but at the national level," Chowdhury said. The company will
also come up with new M2M technologies on electronics. "We already got one team
that does M2M technologies and one more team that does software development," he
said. According to Chowdhury, a Smart City is one which makes use of electronic
s, communication and information technology to manage infrastructures more effic
iently, provide a higher quality of service to citizens, wherein all its players
(citizens, local companies and the local government) interact with each other t
o evolve and improve their quality and quantity of activity. The upcoming ventur
e will provide consulting to M2M and IoT companies, build applications and solut
ion, offer system integration service and will run network. "It will work like a
combination of a system integrator and a telecom company." Chowdhury said that
GAIA Smart Cities will partner will telecom operators along with technology prov
iders such as IBM and Cisco in the country to offer its solutions and will also
build sensor network across the country to support its services.
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