GEC Media Group and Business Transformation Asia hosted a webinar on ‘Geospatial Technology: The New Business Driver’. The event deliberated on the impact of the policy changes and the new guidelines for the Geospatial sector in India, the new opportunities, and how businesses can benefit from geospatial data and analytics.
In February 2021, the Ministry of Science and Technology in India had released new guidelines for sector with and intent to deregulate the existing protocols and liberalises the sector and make it more competitive by allowing private sector participation. The new policy it means that companies can now acquire and use locational data and geospatial data services, including maps, without any license or approval.
India also set up the public sector NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Center (IN-SPACe), and the Indian Space Association (ISpA) to accelerate development of India’s space industry
Geospatial Technology: The New Business Driver webinar was joined by experts including Lt. General AK Bhatt (Retd), Director General, Indian Space Association – ISpA; Dr Subrata Nityaranjan Das, Scientist/Engineer ‘G’, ISRO; Agendra Kumar, Managing Director, Esri India; AM Parial, Former Vice-Chairman, CHiPS, Barry Nagel, CTO, UP42, and moderated by Shubhendu Parth, Editor, Business Transformation Asia.
Speaking at the event, Lt. General AK Bhatt (Retd), Director General, Indian Space Association (ISpA) talked about the change in policy for the space sector and said, “Space which has always been the domaine of government was now being opened to the entire private sector. Now this led also to the creation of in space, NewSpace India and the government issuing draft policies on remote sensing, space communication and even deciding to now issue a new space activity.”
Dr Subrata Nityaranjan Das, Scientist/Engineer ‘G’, ISRO spoke about the Space-based Remote Sensing Policy of India and said, “It is one of the quickest and the affordable technique for carrying out the development activities within the government or in the private sector and the central government mostly uses the remote sensing data for regional level planning and for the formulation of various projects at international level.”
AM Parial, Former Vice-Chairman, Chhattisgarh Infotech Promotion Society (CHiPS) have been a massive user of geospatial data at CHiPS, the Naya Raipur Smart City project, and the power sector. Speaking at the event, Parial highlighted the major key take aways as a user and said, “It has reduced the dam equity, so it has the success policy that all earlier procedures and guidelines and all these things they cease to access that is a very big thing.”
Barry Nagel, CTO, UP42 talked about the steps taken by India to unlock the space sector and democratise geospatial technology and said, “Governmental organisations rely more on and more earth observation technology, it really serves as a cost-effective, unbiased, time but also location-aware as a source of information. It is great seeing the new Indian Space Association really being there for pushing this public and private partnerships, while also really advocating for the policies that are essentially utilising the space technologies.”
Agendra Kumar, Managing Director, Esri India talked about the different government agencies and the private sector organisations in term of driving innovation and using geospatial technology and said, “In teams of geospatial data, value of data is not that easy to calculate that if you create a data how many people are going to use it. Offen the value wish is derived out of geospatial data is anonymous, but it may not be in terms of direct rupees or dollars.”
The Business Transformation Asia webinar was attended by business and IT decision-makers and solution providers from across the sector, policymakers from the central and state governments, start-ups, researchers and academia.
