City Innovation Exchange (CiX)

Context:

 The City Innovation Exchange (CiX) platform was launched Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs at an online event here today. Shri Anil Agrawal, Joint Secretary, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Shri Kunal Kumar, Joint Secretary and Mission Director, Smart Cities Mission, CEOs of Smart Cities and other officers of the Central and State Governments were also present at the event. 

Key Highlights:

• The City Innovation Exchange (CiX) will connect cities to innovators across the national ecosystem to design innovative solutions for their pressing challenges.
• The platform will ease the discovery, design& validation of solutions through a robust, transparent and user centric process that will reduce barriers for innovators and cities to discover fitting solutions. 
• Built on the concept of ‘open innovation’, the platform will help in the flow of ideas ‘outside in and inside out’, enhancing the skills and capacity required to deliver smart urban governance.
• Through interaction with the Academia and Businesses/Startups, the platform will benefit cities in the transfer of ideas from ‘labs’ to real environment. Similarly, by helping urban governments interact with citizens, the platform will ensure adoption of tested solutions that will be impactful and sustainable.   
• The platform in due time will help our cities in adopting solutions that will enhance the quality of life for its residents and significantly improve the Ease of Doing Business. 
• The Platform has more than 400 start-ups, 100 smart cities, more than 150 challenges statements and over 215 solutions at the time of launch. 
• The platform will be a significant addition to the growing innovation ecosystem of India and focuses on fostering innovative practices in cities.
• CiX, through an ‘open innovation’ process, engages with innovators to design-test-deliver on solutions to pressing urban challenges.
• This initiative is among the ongoing efforts of the Government to realise Prime Minister’s vision of New and AtmaNirbhar Bharat, by making cities more self-reliant and enabled to meet the needs of and provide services to their citizens.
• Designed on the philosophy of ‘everyone is an innovator’, the platform will bring together Citizen Organisations-Academia- Businesses- Government to co-create for the future of Urban India in a transparent and sustainable manner.
• The Smart Cities Mission will partner and effectively collaborate with Startup India, Atal Innovation Mission, AGNIi and other initiatives in the Indian Innovation ecosystem.