Get ready for an exhilarating journey through the world of geospatial at the Geospatial World Forum (GWF) 2024, taking place in the vibrant city of Rotterdam, Netherlands from 13th May to 16th May, with the theme “Geospatial Transition: Powering the World Economy”.
The day 1 of the most awaited GWF 2024 started with India-Europe Space and Geospatial Business Summit, where speakers from both India’s and Europe’s space as well as geospatial industry participated to put forth their points and provide a direction on how both the countries can use each other’s strength to grow.
The summit opened with Sanjay Kumar, CEO, Geospatial World’s opening speech where he emphasized the link between geospatial and space marketplaces, and the need to broaden the interaction and engagement between geospatial and space communities.
He said, “The world is going through elasticity of world order. Looking at the geopolitical order, we have to decide who we are going to do business with.”
While the sectors are growing, the applications are folding like a tectonic plate.
“Post 2020, the main question for everyone is ‘who to do business with’. That’s why there’s a need to foster business relations between those who believe in shared values, rules of law, and democratic ethos,” he adds.
Chief Guest of the Summit, Gince Kuruvilla Mattam, Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of India, The Netherlands said, “All the global financial institutions have an extremely positive estimates for the Indian economy. Since independence, Indian political leadership has been betting high on leadership.”
“Technology is directly leading to prosperity in the country. An important element of technology story in India is the readiness of people to embrace technological change. Financial technologies are a big example of this.”
India-Europe’s Space Relation and investments
Indo-Europe Space cooperation goes back to 1960s, with the ties between ISRO and CNES deepening over the years. With India’s new space policy, that opened the doors wide open for private players, the cooperation between both the countries will provide a open field for the private players.
Rajeev Jyoti, Director Technical, IN-SPACe said, “India’s decadal plan outlines roadmap for economic growth and enhancing collaboration in sunrise sectors. There are non-restrictive policies for investments and setting up start-ups.”
Especially with the recently unveiled India’s FDI policy, the space sector is going to get the much needed investment boost, where the business between countries is going to help each other grow on their strengths.
Pacome Revillon, CEO, Novaspace, said, “Public and private investment in space for strategic reasons coupled with disruptive technologies and innovations is a key factor for growth.
“We have seen an increase in competition amongst space companies in the last few years. The growth is really supported by two large drivers. One is public investment. Many countries have reinforced there view of space-based activities as strategic investment for countries for various purpose.
The second one is the disruptive innovations in technology as well as transforming the older business models to cater new-age solutions.”
Revillon added, “Private investments peeked in 2020 and now has come down but still has a significant investment of $8 billion last year, thanks to Earth observation type business for infra and services. In terms of policy and regulations, certainly a key driver for the industry. We expect certain level of stability even though we have elections in the region.
“Sovereignty and security are certainly drivers behind the policy-making, making EU working on a space law which could consolidate and give common ground in terms of space regulatory environment across Europe.”
ESG regulation, European Green Deal could also be drivers in the years to the come for the sector.
“In terms of EO in Europe, Copernicus today is now the first program on a global basis that provides free public source and downloads which can further increase. Copernicus has helped in supporting a number of GIS and remote sensing applications in Europe, and majorly Africa,” he said.
Bert Klassens, VP – Europe, Geospatial World, “Business is about mutual trust. This is a message that I would like to reiterate.”
