The Andhra Pradesh Economic Development Board (APEDB) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Alibaba Cloud in Vijayawada. The MoU was signed by J Krishna Kishore, Chief Executive Office, APEDB and Vivek Gupta, Director – Business Development, Alibaba Cloud India in the presence of Alex Li, General Manager, Alibaba Cloud India and N Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh.
The Andhra Pradesh Economic Development Board promotes sustainable economic growth through trade, investments, partnerships and collaborations. Alibaba Cloud, the cloud-computing arm of Alibaba Group, provides cloud-computing services to business of all sizes globally.
The MoU is a result of an ongoing discussion that took place at World Economic Forum 2018, Davos between Simon Hu, Senior Vice President of Alibaba Group and President of Alibaba Cloud and the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, said the company.
The MoU envisages leveraging Alibaba's Cloud and Smart City technologies for sustainable farming, integrated traffic management, smart city management, small and medium enterprises and skill development programs.
APEDB & Alibaba Cloud also recently concluded a multi-stakeholder workshop between Alibaba Cloud and key government departments.
Dr. Alex Li called on N Chandrababu Naidu in Vijayawada and discussed technologies for sustainable farming, integrated traffic management, smart city management, small and medium enterprises, entrepreneurship and skill development.
J. Krishna Kishore, Chief Executive Office, APEDB commented, “The Government is ensuring that SMEs in Andhra Pradesh are integrated with global value chains. This MoU with Alibaba Cloud helps to foster greater economic growth through tech-empowered SMEs.”
The Alibaba Cloud team has even visited the state's Real Time Governance Command Control Center at the Secretariat. Dr. Alex Li, General Manager, Alibaba Cloud India, emphasized that Andhra Pradesh is the pioneer in adopting and implementing latest technologies such as Big Data Analytics, Cloud Computing, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence etc. in its governance model.
He added, “We are pleased to collaborate with a progressive state such as Andhra Pradesh and we are confident to leverage the Alibaba Cloud's ET City Brain Solution for furthering the State's digital transformation and deploying advanced ICT technologies.”
The group is likely to extend co-operation in Real Time Governance functions such as Traffic Management, Cyber Surveillance, Disaster Management, Sustainable Farming, among others.
Vivek Gupta, Director – Business Development, Alibaba Cloud India, emphasized that the State of Andhra Pradesh is far ahead in terms of creating a conducive environment for technology adoption for businesses. He added, “We would leverage Alibaba Cloud's Platform to help facilitate Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in the state to establish an online presence, provide global market access and enable the businesses to double their incomes.”
Alibaba Cloud's crowd-intelligence platform, Tianchi has attracted over 200,000 developers from 91 countries and regions in disciplines ranging from data mining and artificial intelligence to machine learning and operational research to solve real-world issues facing society at large, said the company.
Further, the MoU would unlock synergies between the Tianchi program and startup innovation programs undertaken by the Department of IT & Electronics to provide mentorship support and upskill the graduates and engineers in Alibaba Cloud technologies.
Alibaba Cloud has collaborated with Malaysian Digital Economy Corporation SdnBhd (MDEC) under the Tianchi Big Data Programme to train 500 individuals and 300 start-up companies to become Alibaba Cloud certified professionals.
The State has successfully incorporated the cloud technology for real-time reporting of soil testing and weather monitoring through “Sowing Application for farmers combined with a Personalized Village Advisory Dashboard”. It has launched ‘Plantix', a plant diagnostics app in collaboration with International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) through which crop health can be identified.
