The first Indo-French Workshop took place on 13th December 2023 (1:30 pm to 5:45 pm in Bengaluru, 9:00 am to 1:15 pm in Paris) at Consulate General of France (21 Palace Road, Vasanth Nagar, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560052).
The Workshop has been opened by Henri Verdier, Ambassador for Digital Affairs, French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, and Sharad Sharma, Co-Founder, iSPIRT Foundation. The idea was to build an Indo-French group of 20 experts from India and France to work both on Data Ecosystems and Data Spaces, considering the R&D aspects, but also industrial and diplomatic aspects of it.
Some use cases were also explored in particular, like Agriculture, Geospatial industries and Railways transportation, with an Indo-French comparative approach.
Some speakers presented their contribution remotely, a small public was welcomed physically and a larger online.
The Program
The detailed program is available, cross referencing the speakers and their institutions. Slides and resources are also available.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SxRFWzjHrCQN8-riuooSvfRavjHjuFk_?usp=sharing
Main Targets
The main targets of this #1 Workshop was:
- To compare the Indian approach of Data Ecosystems & Data Spaces to the French one, learning from both
- To identify a first circle of experts motivated by working in an Indo-French environment (we have immediately set up the Indo-French Institute of Data and Ecosystem Spaces (IFIDES) LinkedIn group, which grew up continuously, from 20 active members in March 2024 to 80 active members in March 2025
- To explore a modus operandi for gathering efficiently those Indo-French groups and allowing them to exchange and to build up cooperative projects (this gave birth for example to several propositions answering the 2025 CEFIPRA Call for Projects)