BENGALURU: projects undertaken by have been moving at a slow pace and have not seen much progress in the past year, said , India chief executive of NEC Technologies. The Japanese firm is one of the largest technology vendors offering services for the national ID project over the last eight years and has been involved in several other government projects in India. Amongst other segments, the company has been aggressively pursuing smart cities opportunities in a bid to treble its India revenue to Rs 3,600 crore in the next five years. This has not met with tangible results on ground for NEC primarily because of slow pace of government approvals. “We have already been working for about a year (on multiple smart city projects), but the government has still not decided on it yet,” said Inaba, adding, “Many other cities we are trying to go but there is very little progress.” The executive did not share specific details on the city or state where there is a delay. Indian Smart Cities Mission is the ambitious programme to develop 100 cities across the country, making them citizen friendly and sustainable. This would encompass smart transportation, smart electrification, smarter delivery of good and services amongst others. Despite the successful execution of previous smart cities project in Surat, Inaba said NEC has been struggling to move forward with other cities. “We are working with those (proposed smart) cities but no orders have been awarded yet,” he added The company has previously worked with the Surat police as part of ‘safe city’ project to establish a network of biometric and facial recognition systems for criminal identification and immigration control.
Progress on Indian smart city projects undertaken by Japan's NEC Technologies has been delayed by slow government approvals, the company said. NEC is one of the biggest providers of biometrics services for India's national ID project Aadhaar. Indian Smart Cities Mission aims to introduce smart transportation, smart electrification, and smarter delivery of goods and services, among other initiatives. Smart city infrastructure has been successfully rolled out in Surat and Inaba, NEC said.