Digital & Smart Cities Assessment, India (DKTI)

Year: 2020  |  Client: GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit)  |  Country: India

Under GIZ's Deutsche Klimatechnologieinitiative (DKTI) programme in India, Cities Forum conducted an in-depth assessment of digital readiness and smart-city implementation in selected Indian urban centres, with a strong focus on electric-bus adoption as a flagship decarbonisation lever. India's smart-city ambitions and its push for cleaner public transport are closely intertwined, and the assignment set out to understand how ready cities actually were, in digital infrastructure, governance and technology adoption, to deliver on both.

Our approach

The team evaluated existing digital infrastructure, governance capabilities and technology-adoption patterns across the participating cities, combining desk research with structured stakeholder engagement: meetings with municipal authorities, state transport corporations, bus operators and vehicle manufacturers. A dedicated technical stream examined e-bus procurement models, tender design, depot infrastructure, charging technologies and total-cost-of-ownership analyses, drawing on international references including Santiago de Chile, Bogotá, Madrid, London and Barcelona so that Indian decision-makers could learn from cities that had already navigated large-scale electrification.

What we delivered

Cities Forum facilitated a high-level webinar on e-bus adoption, organised jointly with GIZ and Indian counterparts, featuring targeted presentations on business models, adoption barriers and operator perspectives. Deliverables included city-level assessment reports, technology briefings, a barriers-to-adoption analysis, a comparative benchmarking deck, and policy recommendations for scaling e-bus deployment while modernising urban digital infrastructure.

Impact

The engagement helped Indian cities and national stakeholders align their smart-city ambitions with climate objectives, informed subsequent DKTI support packages, and gave GIZ a replicable methodology for assessing digital and low-carbon transport readiness in other emerging-economy contexts. By connecting the digital-governance and clean-transport agendas within a single assessment, and by grounding recommendations in real international experience, Cities Forum provided a practical bridge between ambition and implementation. The project also deepened the firm's long-running collaboration with GIZ and strengthened its credentials in the Indian market, one of the most consequential arenas for the global transition to sustainable urban mobility.