more-in The World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT-2018), the first in the annual series of such events to come to India, drew to a close on Wednesday. Coinciding with the Nasscom India Leadership Forum, which was also held in the city for the first time, the event may have ended, but the show continues for Hyderabad. The city, which had played host to Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) in November, is all geared up for more events, of national and international significance, in the days and weeks to come. Every event, as IT and Industries Minister K.T. Rama Rao sought to underscore, provides an opportunity to showcase the city and Telangana and their strengths, especially the growing prominence of Hyderabad in IT, the ecosystem it offers for tech innovation and new-age industries. In an interaction after a ceremony in which the city handed the WCIT baton to Armenia, the Minister said the World Congress was preceded by a conference on mining. On Thursday, the 15th edition of BioAsia, a biotechnology and life sciences forum, would get under way, in which Union Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu is scheduled to participate. This is to be followed, later this month, by a national E-Governance Summit and in March by Wings India, a civil aviation event. On March 8, on International Women’s Day, the Women Entrepreneur Hub would be launched, Mr. Rao said. The WCIT, which served as a forum for networking and forging alliances, also saw the State government and Nasscom signing an MoU for a centre of excellence in data science and artificial intelligence, a technology partnership agreement between Telangana and a Taiwanese city and Adobe announcing plans to set up an AI lab in the city. For the participants, there was a lot in store, including talks by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev of Isha Foundation; Sophia, the humanoid; and actor Deepika Padukone. “The kind of interest shown by the participants was amazing,” IT Secretary Jayesh Ranjan said about WCIT and NILF, which saw over 1,800 participants from over 30 countries. Pointing out that some of the best names in the industry addressed the gathering, he said the State government has initiated discussion with Tom Moore, Lead-Alphabet, Google X, to explore the possibility of using technology to improve broadband connectivity. The State could probably be the first user of Google X as it is looking to use the technology to address the leftover connectivity issue in the T-Fiber project. “The WCIT and NILF went off well organisationally and it’s a matter of great satisfaction for us,” he said.

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