Calgary featured at Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai Social Summits
The largest commercial city in Northern India, New Delhi was the first city stop on the Calgary-to-India mission led by Mayor Naheed Nenshi, University of Calgary President and Vice-Chancellor Dr. Ed McCauley and Mount Royal University President and Vice-Chancellor Dr. Tim Rahilly.
Home to many intergovernmental offices, including Invest in Alberta and the residence of Canada’s High Commissioner to the Republic of India, Nadir Patel, New Delhi was an opportunity to discuss Indo-Canadian bilateral trade, sectors of future growth and opportunities for Calgary, as a leading economy, to emerge as a partner for India’s regional centres.
As New Delhi is a key market for tech and investment, Calgary leaders engaged with the local tech community to share Calgary’s strengths in the industrialization of key sectors with an Industry Roundtable hosted by the CEO and Managing Director of Tech Mahindra.
Education was also a focus during post-secondary school tours that highlighted future skilling and alignment with Calgary on the digitization of the ecosystems.
Organized by Global Shapers Delhi, the Delhi Social Summit was a highlight of the visit that featured Mayor Nenshi as the keynote speaker. The Summit focused on imagining the future of globalism, borderless entrepreneurship and innovation with cities as key ecosystems facilitating change. Mayor Nenshi’s keynote address highlighted Calgary as the city of choice for the best entrepreneurs and focused on the need to create ecosystems for entrepreneurial innovation and global change, citing cities as the engines of sustainability.
Bangalore
The tech centre of India, Bangalore is home to the headquarters of India’s largest technology companies. It is also an undeniable location for talent; considered one of the most highly educated workforces in the world, the city has 19 universities and institutes focused on life sciences, information and communications technology (ICT), management and law.
The second city on the Calgary-India mission, the visit kicked off with an industry roundtable focused on the collaborative opportunities for the two cities in the sectors of film, technology and tourism.
A tour of the Wipro headquarters, an Indian multinational providing information technology, consulting and business process services, was an opportunity to discuss innovation, tech and talent exchanges between the two cities.
The Bangalore Social Summit concluded the visit, featuring Mayor Nenshi as the keynote speaker with invitees including the Mayor of Bangalore and Government officials of Karnataka. The focus of the keynote was on startup innovation and global change – local is now global and solving some of the biggest problems of our times needs a convergence of people with ideas, technologies that are enabling and an infrastructure that brings all this together.
Mumbai
The last city on the week-long tour, Mumbai, is one of the business and financial centres of India and the entertainment capital of the country as the home of Bollywood.
Timed with the 2020 India International Film Tourism Conclave Asia’s largest locations show presented a major platform for film commissions, tourism offices and production service companies from around the world to showcase their locations, incentives and services to the Indian film industry.
Mayor Nenshi was the guest of honour at the Conclave’s opening gala and Tourism Impact Awards where he presented the last two awards of the evening for outstanding achievement.
Mumbai was also an opportunity to be featured on a ‘Filming in Calgary’ panel with an audience of leading in-market production companies.
The visit concluded with the Mumbai Social Summit with a dual lens focus on media and entertainment, and innovation and technology. While there has been tremendous progress in both the media and entertainment, and innovation and technology industries, the social summit was an opportunity to examine how these sectors can and have achieve real social change and identifying areas of opportunity for partnerships between the cities.
