MIT experts claim Kumbh Mela can give ideas for smart city start-up building

MIT experts claim Kumbh Mela can give ideas for smart city start-up building

Nashik is home to a lot of hullabaloo today.
Why?
Come September and the city will play host to the Kumbh Mela – one of the largest and most religious human congregations on Earth. This month long festival takes place once every three years rotating among the other holy grails of India – Haridwar, Allahabad, Nashik and Ujjain. Nashik, which is usually known for its vineyards, is now transforming itself into a metropolis with improved and increased temporary housing, healthcare and policing to accommodate and facilitate the countless pilgrims who will visit the city during the peak days of the festival. So where does the concept of smart city come into play here?

Researchers in MIT believe that this festival brings forth an opportunity for entrepreneurs to devise tech and logistics solutions to the challenge of creating large functional cities in a short time that can be tested, firmed and replicated across India.

Entrepreneurs like Sandip Shinde, co-founder of the Kumbha Foundation are hosting ‘Kumbhathons’ – weeklong innovation camps attended by citizens, governments and corporates.

Kumbha Foundation is a non-profit organisation has organised five Kumbathon events since more than 18 months in association with MIT. The project is aiming to develop solutions that can be rolled out to other cities.

“The main objective and goal for everybody including MIT Media Lab and people working around is actually creating impact on the citizens and bring innovation culture in city like Nashik so that it can be replicated in any other city in India,” said Mr. Shinde

The first such ‘Kumbathon’ was held in January 2014 in Nashik where students from engineering and medical colleges in the city were asked to join. More than a thousand problems that emerge during the festival were outsourced from students and citizens.

An official Kumbh Mela smartphone app gives pilgrims information about the routes they should take for bathing in the holy Godavari River, the center of Kumbh Mela, as well as live traffic information, availability of hotel rooms and hospital beds and the location of stores and banks.

An epidemic tracker app gives doctors and authorities information for tracing any likely spread of disease during the pilgrimage by capturing location, gender, age group, symptoms about the patients. The MediTracker app gives information about ambulances and hospitals in the vicinity.

The next Kumbhathon event is scheduled for January and the Kumbha Foundation and MIT Media Lab are in the process of registering the Nashik Innovation Center, a non-profit company, to provide common space to the innovators and experts to help progress innovations and build entrepreneurial skills.

(With inputs from The Wall Street Journal)