High Profile Global Summit: India to Host Olympics of IT Industry for the First Time

The World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA) is hosting its international conference, World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT), along with Nasscom, in Hyderabad from February 19 to 21. Touted to be the ‘Olympics of the IT industry’, the conference is coming to India for the first time.

 The focus of WCIT India 2018 will be ‘Fulling the Promise of Digital Age’. The event has lined up about 22 sessions covering artificial intelligence, blockchain, innovation, future of work, and sports and technology. About 2,500 representatives, including 500 foreign participants from 30 countries, will take part in the conference. Along with the WCIT 2018, which is being jointly hosted by apex IT industry body Nasscom, WITSA and the Telangana government, the Nasscom India Leadership Forum (NILF) 2018 too will be conducted simultaneously in Hyderabad, The Hindu reported.

According to The Times of India, Nasscom president R Chandrasekhar said that the event has several showstoppers and disruptors lined up, including Sophia the social humanoid robot that has been developed by Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics.

Pointing out that Hyderabad has already made its mark on the global IT map, Telangana IT minister KT Rama Rao said the city is already home to the top five most valued tech companies in the world, be it Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and WCIT will only reinforce Hyderabad’s standing on the world map, bringing more laurels in terms of visibility and aspirations to be a global city, The Times of India reported.

The Telangana government clinched the conference for Hyderabad by paying a sponsorship fee of Rs 5 crore to the organisers, the newspaper reported.

The key speakers include Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, Coursera co-founder Andrew Ng, Honeywell chairman David Cote, Emerson Electric president Ed Monser, NEC Corporation's executive VP and CTO Katsumi Emura, Novartis Pharma CIO Scott Sandschafer, Standard Chartered group CIO Michael Gorriz, SITA CEO Barbara Dalibard, Capgemini group chairman and CEO Paul Hermelin. Isha Foundation founder Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev and Cornell SC Johnson School of Business dean Soumitra Dutta, among others, will also be speaking at the event, The Hindu reported.

WITSA is an umbrella organisation representing IT industry associations in about 80 countries and 90 percent of the information and communication technologies markets.