AMRITA CHOWDHURY
Director, Gaia
Amrita Chowdhury is Director of Gaia, an Urban Tech firm providing insights-as-a-service for Smart Sites and Smart Cities.
Gaia solutions blend IOT, ICT, AI/ML, analytics, and visualization for wide area monitoring and last mile last minute intelligence from distributed locations. Gaia has worked with multiple smart cities and townships, in collaboration with infrastructure partners, to create city tech strategy, design tech blueprints, project manage implementation, and implement city based sensor and communications solutions. Gaia solutions monitor approximately 90 million sq. ft of built urban infrastructure and 440 million sq. ft of urban city areas. Gaia has won multiple technology, innovation, and social impact awards, including Qualcomm Design in India, Microsoft Research, Frost & Sullivan, Quality Council of India, Nasscom Emerge 50, and Mayor of London India Emerging 20.
Amrita is a business strategist, engineer & innovator. She brings a unique understanding of business growth, technology, digital spaces and branding.
Previously, Amrita served as President of DY Works (Future Group), where she expanded the business with special focus on market research and brand led strategy for government, townships and realty, and digital platforms segments. Prior to that, Amrita was Country Head South Asia for Harlequin (Torstar), where she significantly grew the India portfolio; and Associate Director, Education for South Asia for Harvard Business School.
Prior to moving to India, Amrita provided Board advisory and strategy consulting for Fortune 100 clients with AT Kearney in USA and Oppeus in Australia. She has worked with clients across a variety of industries including mining, manufacturing, engineering, legal and professional services, insurance, technology, government, education, auto ancillaries, waste management, and more to provide strategic planning for new business and business growth, Board evaluations, and Board level strategy workshops.
Amrita started her journey in product development with Applied Materials in California, where her work led to innovations that enabled next-gen chip manufacturing. Amrita holds 7 US patents for semi-conductor manufacturing.
Amrita is an Independent Director on the Board and Audit Committee of Mahindra Lifespaces Developers, Nesco, and Simmonds Marshall. She is on the Board of Drishtant, a tech startup for the social sector.
Amrita holds degrees in B.Tech. from IIT Kanpur, MS from UC Berkeley, and MBA from Carnegie Mellon - Tepper Business School.
She is the author of two books. She has written multiple whitepapers and contributed to policy documents on Smart Cities, Design Thinking, Systems Thinking, and Future of Jobs for various Ministries and industry bodies.