Nagpur: The third edition of the Global Nagpur Summit was unveiled in Nagpur on Saturday, 19th November in the presence of many Nagpur industrialists, business persons and city planners.
The inaugural day of the event had Acharya Balkrishna, the Managing Director of Patanjali and Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari as chief guests. The day also saw discussions about scope of growth for Nagpur in the coming few years during the City Growth Conference.
It may be mentioned here that the Nagpur Global Summit, an initiative of Nagpur First, a non-profit and very unique organization set up by NRIs of Nagpur origin. This kind of endeavor has never been seen world wide where expats belonging to a particular place have come back after many decades to ‘give something back to their home town’. Dr. Dinesh Jain is the main architect behind this noble venture. Though he is a businessman based in USA he works hard for the most part of the year to get the world to Nagpur for the two days of the GNS. He has committed to doing this for 5 years at least.
Speakers during the conference included Amol Kalar, Deputy Trade and Investment Commissioner, British Deputy High Commission, SCI Global Envoy and former Chair of the Board of Directors, Sister Cities International Nancy Huppert, VP and Head Smart World and Communication Business, Larsen & Toubro Ltd R. Srinivasan, Additional Municipal Commissioner, Nagpur Municipal Corporation Ramnath Sonawane, Chairman of Indian Institute of Architects, Nagpur Centre Paramjit Ahuja, Project Lead of Smart Village, Anandwan Gautam Karajgi, Advisor-Trade & Education, WTC Mumbai A O Kuruvila, Chairman and Managing Director of WCL R R Mishra, President of TiE, Nagpur Shashikant Chaudhary and well known Entrepreneur of Nagpur and Former Chairman and Managing Director of MOIL GP Kundargi.
While inaugurating the conference Balkrishna announced that Patanjali has extended the area of their upcoming plant at MIHAN from 60 acres to 100 acres. Giving the credit of bringing the plant to Nagpur to Gadkari, he said, “The plant will comply to not only WHO standards but also those put up by US FDA. It will be the first of its kind plant in the world which will manufacture and sell stuff to the entire world out of Nagpur.” He also said that with this venture Nagpur is set to play a big part in the Make in India movement as well as the mission of Patanjali to promote Swadesi products.
The concept of bringing a world class manufacturing unit to Nagpur was a part of making life easier for the farmers in the region who are otherwise infamous for big number of suicides said Gadkari. “Vidarbha is home to 75% of the forest wealth and 80% of mineral health of Maharashtra this will be beneficial to Patanjali as well since they can get all the raw material they need nearby. We are also known as logistics hub in the country from where transport to any other part of the country would be very easy. We will also have an air cargo and passenger hub in MIHAN s which will boost the trade capacity of any industry coming up here. We are fortunate that the first of these industries is a social enterprise that is a brand ambassador of Ayurveda, Yoga and Indian way of life,” he said.
A report on Nagpur’s standing in terms of ISO standards for a smart city as mandated by International Standards Organization was also unveiled on the occasion.
“The report studies characteristics of Nagpur under 17 different categories under the ISO 37120. Nagpur would be the first city in the world to undertake such a study on such a large scale. Nagpur Municipal Corporation has shared the required data with Nagpur First and p-Manifold, the company is making the assessment study”, said Rahul Bagdia, Secretary, Nagpur Smart City Council.
Topics like Collaborations for Smarter Cities, City Growth Opportunities through International Co-operation and Leveraging local human and natural resources for global opportunities were discussed on the first day of the summit.
