Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor and Dell EMC grab awards for smart cities, R&D

Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation, which aims to develop new industrial cities, won the award for excellence in building smart cities, while information infrastructure firm Dell EMC won an award for research and development at the seventh annual edition of One Globe Forum held at New Delhi. This year’s agenda was how new technologies could go a long way in digitising countries.

At the event, commodity and collateral management company National Bulk Handling Corporation Ltd won the award for excellence in enabling a digital economy while solar energy company Mahindra Susten Pvt. Ltd won the award for excellence in enabling a green environment.

The award for excellence in entrepreneurial ecosystem was won by startup incubator T-Hub and that for app-based service by ride-hailing firm Uber Technologies Inc. Anil Agarwal, chairman of natural resources company Vedanta Resources plc, won the award for excellence in creating social impact, and Ramesh Sippy, Indian film director and producer, won the award for excellence in entrepreneurship.

The awards were given away by Salman Khurshid, former Union cabinet minister of external affairs, at One Globe Forum hosted by Salwan Media Ventures founded in 2004. The New Delhi-headquartered firm has interests in education, consumer and business information sectors.

Last year at the forum, Amitabh Kant, chief executive, government think-tank NITI Aayog, had said that India needed to open its economy in a major way to overcome the challenges in becoming a 21st-century knowledge economy.

"India needs to open up on trade policy. It has become a centre for global innovation in many ways. India must realise that it’s an integral part of the global supply chain. And despite protectionism, Trumpism and Brexit, we are a globalised world. Things will get designed somewhere, manufactured somewhere else, all the integration will take place at one place. In the past couple of years, we have opened up in a major way in defence, railways, e-commerce and housing,” he had said.

This year, the forum saw participation from Piyush Goyal, minister of state for power, coal and new and renewable energy; Rajiv Pratap Rudy, minister of state for skill development and entrepreneurship and minister of parliamentary affairs; Babul Supriyo, minister of state for urban development; Amitabh Kant, chief executive, government think-tank NITI Aayog; Purushottam Kaushik, managing director of sales in India and Saarc (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation), tech firm Cisco Systems, Inc; and Onno Ruhl, India country director, World Bank. The platform aims to bring together leaders from businesses, government, academia, non-profit and multilateral sectors to discuss, debate and deliberate on how to build a 21st-century knowledge economy in India and South Asia.