Imex Systems
Smart Solutions for Building Smart Cities

Given the expeditious rate of urbanization taking place, it does not come as a surprise that the idea of a smart city is making strides. According to a research conducted by Frost and Sullivan, the smart city market is expected to reach $1.5 trillion by 2020. The study also states that around 26 global cities and more than 90 sustainable cities are expected to witness major development in the coming years, resulting in the massive consumption of the world’s resources. As the growth of 'smart cities' concept increases, so will the need to innovate and provide solutions to foster convergence within the city. However, the progression doesn’t come without posing certain challenges for organizations and city authorities. “A measure of effectiveness of smart city initiative is to measure the happiness index of citizens, as some countries have already started doing,” says Damodar Arapakota, CEO, Imex Systems. There are many technologies to help a city become a smart city, covering every aspect of life of a citizen. “At Imex we believe the most important aspects are citizen services delivery, traffic and public safety. So our solutions are geared towards these aspects,” he adds.

Imex Systems with offices in Toronto, Dubai and Washington DC delivers innovative and cost effective products and solutions in order to help the governments leverage technology in the best possible manner, aligning and integrating people to become efficient and citizen-centric. One such product offered by the company is iGov—a platform that has been specifically designed to reduce the cost of acquiring and implementing the eGovernment. “iGov is the basic building block of our smart city platform called iCity,” explains Arapakota. iCity is a modular system that provides a number of other applications like video surveillance with video analytics, and parking management through the Internet of Things (IoT). These factors have led numerous governments around the world approach Imex Systems which has enabled them to achieve measurable economic impact and improved citizen satisfaction. In many of these instances, the company has deployed iCity technology.

At Imex, we help the CIOs navigate through the confusion surrounding smart cities by conducting a workshop which gives them valuable insights on the topic

With the smart city concept selling like hot cakes in the present, Arapakota believes that the federal and state governments in North America taking up the initiative and help develop smart cities would benefit the cities and its citizens greatly. “Any city that wants to become smart should first be smart in running the city by becoming a ‘smart government’,” says Arapakota. The Imex solution covers Smart Government, Smart Operations, Smart Customer Service, and Smart Payments to name a few.

Imex has introduced many innovations to the market and have been working on many new innovations as well. The company advocates the use of Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive computing, Augmented Reality, and Biometrics in order to improve service delivery as well as customer service. “Some of our new offerings include use of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence to improve customer service,” remarks Arapakota.

Drawing a roadmap on the company's future, Arapakota says "I believe that Imex is on the right path to be well known for its innovation and thought leadership for smart cities”. He expects Imex to strengthen its position as the go-to company for any city contemplating on becoming a smart city. The integrated architecture of Imex’s smart city platform, iCity will be the key driver in achieving better efficiencies, while reducing costs and improving citizen satisfaction. “We are currently doing pilots in a few cities. We believe that this will be the wave of the future,” he concludes.