Bhubaneswar: Odisha’s Rourkela is one of 15 cities in the world who won the Challenge of the Global Mayor 2021.
This is the only city from India who won this year’s challenge.
After winning, the steel city will receive one million dollars more than three years to better purify, implement, and the scale of the idea.
They will also have access to guidelines from world-renowned experts in innovation and data to help them in this process.
Rourkela was chosen from between 631 applications from 99 countries to become one of 50 cities champions to test their ideas.
The city rose to the top of 50 cities the champion was one of the 15 main prize winners.
The Challenge of the Global Mayor 2021 is the fifth edition of the Bloomberg philanthropic innovation competition that supports and spreads the most promising ideas of the city.
Winners are selected based on four criteria: Vision, potential impact, feasibility, and transferability.
This idea provides a strong snapshot about the priority of the innovation of hundreds of cities in the world.
Subhankar Mohapatra, Commissioner Rourkela Municipal Corporation (RMC), told toi that their idea was to form a digital cluster based on cold sun storage and use electric vehicles to distribute commodities that are easily damaged to various consumer categories.
He said the Covid-19 pandemic had affected people, especially those who were on the lower side of the economic strata.
There are around 700 small vendors registered in a city that sells easily damaged items such as vegetables and fruits.
From them, 300 is a female vendor.
Because of the lack of appropriate storage, they try to sell goods (have low save life) on the same day and the resort for the sale of distress, he added.
“We came up with the idea of ​​building cold storage for this vendor in several places chosen in the city to solve the problem of sales of this pressure.
We have also decided to use solar power (green energy) in cold stores for the benefit of the environment.
We will also Operate electric vehicles (e-rickshaw) for goods transportation To order and receive commodities, “he added.
He thanked Nit Rourkela for helping in a detailed survey of city street vendors and related works.
Sources say RMC will establish cold stores in a decentralized way throughout the city.
Although the number of cold stores has not been resolved, the Civic body has focused on five locations in the city.
Michael Odermatt, Program Manager, Global Global Mayor Master, told TI that food insecurity and waste were an important problem for cities around the world.
“We really want to see Rourkela overcoming these two important topics, helping locals, and building models to follow other cities,” he added.
He said many Indian cities have apply for challenges and two cities made him a championship phase.
This is Pune and Rourkela.
But Rourkela entered the winning list.
“For the next three years, we will work with 15 winners to support their work to implement and add to their ideas,” he added.