The Greater Chennai Corporation’s Innovation Hub (CHUB), which seeks to foster research and development on urban issues, is set for a major transformation.
The civic body has started discussions to sign memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with five incubators, focusing on technological innovation to find solutions for civic issues faced by the city’s residents.
“We are in the initial stages of discussion with five incubators. MoUs have not been signed yet. CHUB will act as an international platform. Any person, incubators and startups from different countries can connect with CHUB. We will promote cross-border collaborations as well,” said Azhagu Pandia Raja M.P., Chennai city innovation officer, Chennai Smart City Limited.
“For citizens, it is an effective way to work along with the government in problem- solving. Also, the focus of CHUB is to solve civic issues, which will ultimately benefit citizens,” he said.
Recently, two startups have begun work on raw data collection, including real-time videos about traffic congestion on city roads collected by the Integrated Command and Control Centre, to find solutions to civic issues faced by residents in each locality.
“The pandemic gave an immense opportunity to CHUB to work on various challenges caused by COVID-19, and we came up with multiple technological initiatives, which were highly successful,” Mr. Raja said.
“Current initiatives at the Corporation are in various stages of development. Further, CHUB caters to the need of other city corporations as well. Recently, Madurai Corporation, Chengalpattu Municipality and Tiruvallur Municipality consulted with CHUB for solutions to various issues,” he said.
Madurai has asked for an online slot-booking tool for COVID-19 vaccination while Tiruvallur wanted a mobile application for farmers to eliminate middlemen during the government’s procurement of crops. CHUB is also working alongside StartupTN, the State government’s mission to promote startups.
Corporation Deputy Commissioner (Works) M.S. Prasanth said the civic body had requested everyone to make use of the platform.
“CHUB is a dedicated platform to foster and promote innovation through civic engagement. It will facilitate and sustain the discovery and deployment of innovation to tackle urban issues. The Corporation will use this platform to support innovative ideas emerging from society. CHUB has started benefiting the civic body with recent initiatives like the online COVID-19 vaccination tool,” he said.
At least one lakh residents, including senior citizens, have benefited from the online vaccination tool. Startups are likely to start work on such data for various aspects of COVID-19 management.
Pivotal role
“CHUB will play a pivotal role in bringing the academia, research, industrial thought leaders, government agencies and industries together to solve issues pertaining to the development goals of the city. CHUB has the right intent and leadership, that believes technology and collaboration can accelerate the goals. The solutions are built to scale it across the State,” said Narendran M., vice-president, head of engineering, Mr. Cooper - India, which worked with CHUB.
Corporation Commissioner Gagandeep Singh Bedi said, “We do encourage innovations and involvement of citizens in urban governance. In CHUB, we already have citizens’ participation. We would like citizens and startups to be part of the Corporation’s urban governance so that residents can get better service.”
The current initiatives of CHUB include the development of workforce application to digitise solid waste management process in Corporation limits, waste exchange portal, open data portal for the Corporation and optimisation of the existing Namma Chennai application.
“We have interacted with startups in their incubators about the existing opportunity in CHUB. The whole setup is very young, just six months old. But it has started gaining traction and attracting more people,” an official said.
