"I think #Shanghai has leapfrogged into being a truly smart and digital city in the last 10 years," said Rajnish Sharma, associate vice president of #Infosys, an IT company based in #India's Bangalore. "Shanghai is an artificial intelligent ecosystem. There is wide-scale deployment of big data and internet technologies."

Sharma described Shanghai as a "welcoming" city that stands above its peers in culture, commerce and internationalism. It's a place where "east really meets west," he said.