With cities getting ‘smarter’ and trends in urban technology catching on, the possibilities for civic growth and development are becoming immense.
Small gated communities in Bengaluru and even global cities such as Harare, Zimbabwe, and Kansas City, U.S., are working on the Technagara platform, designed by Mapunity, a Bengaluru-based social tech startup, for smart technology-aided urban solutions.
Technagara integrates urban solutions on a geospatial platform for not just citizens and government agencies but also for businesses, for over 126 cities across the country. The city-neutral platform, where data of any city can be hosted to create an app for that city, has attracted global city administrations.
What makes the platform more interesting is that you can create an app for a city or even a municipal ward or a gated community, turning it hyper-local. The platform is designed to host data over nine major domains — from transport to health, and education to environment — for each of the cities. With the platform being common to both citizens and government agencies, citizens can report their issues, seek more buses and upload photos of utility inspection reports, among others.
“Technology should solve larger urban problems and the Indian IT talent should be utilised to solve the problems here, unlike now where most Indian talent is busy servicing foreign firms,” Ashwin Mahesh, founder of Mapunity, said, and added that while the metros have resources to build such tech platforms, tier-II cities would benefit the most from such a city-neutral platform without any expenditure.
