Special interest groups consisting of senior officials of government departments have been formed to hold talks with industry leaders and top executives of some of the world’s leading companies who will descend in the city for the two-day global digital summit, #FUTURE, set to get under way on Thursday.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will inaugurate the summit at Le Meridien Kochi at 10 a.m.
The special interest groups will lead the official meetings to discuss business, investment opportunities and a range of other subjects while the two-day summit itself will be a collective brainstorming exercise with the aim of creating a roadmap for Kerala’s digital future.
Meetings have been scheduled with Nandan Nilekani, non-executive chairman, Infosys; Christoph Mueller, chief digital and innovation officer, Emirates Group; Roland Schuetz, group CIO, Lufthansa Group; Alok Ohrie, president and MD, India Commercial, Dell EMC; and Byju Raveendran, founder and CEO, Byju’s.
The government will also hold talks with Natesh Manikoth, Chief Data Officer, Federal Aviation Administration, US; Thomas Zacharia, Director, Oak-Ridge National Laboratory; T.K. Kurien, managing partner and chief investment officer, Premji Invest, and Dinu John Parel, global CIO, Dover Corporation.
Window to digital world
They are among the nearly 30 global experts who will be sharing their knowledge and experience during discussions scheduled over two days covering sectors from travel and transportation; big data and health and sustainability; to education and skills; technology and banking; and finance and retail.
“We do not intend #FUTURE to be simply about IT as a business or service; we want this to be more of a window into the digital world of tomorrow where technology touches the lives of people in ways that may be inconceivable now. We want Kerala to be ahead of the digital curve, and our young entrepreneurs and start-up founders to take advantage of the opportunities it presents,” M. Sivasankar, Secretary, Electronics and Information Technology, State government, was quoted as saying in a release issued here.
#FUTURE is a brainchild of Kerala’s High Power IT Committee (HPIC), headed by Infosys co-founder S.D. Shibulal, and one of the outcomes of the summit will be the formation of a 150-member ‘Digital Achievers Network of Kerala Origin’ who will become the brand ambassadors of Kerala, championing the State’s efforts to become a knowledge industry hub.
