over 7 years ago
Talking with judge Abishek Shukla from GE Ventures
One of the more coveted prizes in the Intelligent World Hackathon is a one-on-one meeting with GE Ventures, GE’s startup incubator. We thought you might want to know more about what GE Ventures does and how they can help you seed your smart city project, so we had a chat with Abishek Shukla (Abishek is also one of our hackathon judges).
What’s your role at GE Ventures?
I’m a director at GE ventures, specifically looking at investing in companies across Intelligent environments, IoT, and smart cities.
What are some IoT, smart city, or intelligent environment companies or projects that GE Ventures has worked on recently?
I am looking at applications which can get integrated with the Predix platform and solve a specific problem for a city or building ( e.g parking, trash collection, traffic, etc.). The other investments I am interested in are new data sets that might improve smart city buildings (think air quality, resource management, geospatial data, etc.).
Some of our recent investments include Lucid (building management solutions), Sensity for smart and connected LED luminaires, and Foghorn edge devices.
You’ve lived all over the world — in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, India, and the U.S. Obviously, there are some issues that most cities share (traffic congestion, community safety) and others that are particular to certain locales. What are some specific urban planning issues you’d like to see addressed by the hackathon participants?
I would be interested in understanding how some of the participants are solving pain points for the city, either by adding new kind of sensors or data or using the available data to come to better conclusions. Analytics, traffic management, energy management, etc. are all areas I am interested in.
The IoT sensor market is growing at a fast clip — according to a new report from Zion Research, global demand for the IoT sensors market was valued at USD 4.9 billion in 2014, and is expected to generate revenue of USD 17.81 billion by end of 2020. What are some practical applications you foresee for sensor data in every day city life in the next 5 to 10 years?
The cities of tomorrow will need to aggregate different data sets, make intelligent decisions based on that, and still be cost effective. Multiple areas are up for disruption: automated parking ( with license plate recognition and enforcement), theft/ loss prevention, trash collection, citizen-to-city engagement platforms, cost effective public transportation.
What can the hackathon winners expect when they meet with GE Ventures? How can GE Ventures help them take their urban innovation project to the next stage of development?
I will be able to sit down with them in a 1:1 setting and give them feedback on the company, the business model, etc. If there is a company we really like, we would move on to the next level of meetings.
Want to practice with Predix in person and meet other smart city hackers?
Meet Abishek at the Smart Cities Innovation Summit in Austin next week — get more details about the summit and other upcoming smart city and Predix happenings on our new events page.
Questions?
We're here to help. If you have any questions about the hackathon, post on the discussion forum or email support@devpost.com and we'll respond as soon as we can. For technical questions about the Predix platform, services, or APIs, please go to the official Predix.io forum (http://forum.predix.io) and tag your question with the topic “intelligentworld."