Technical Support to NICDC on Transport & Logistics Planning

Year: 2024–2025  |  Client: NICDC Logistics Data Services Limited (NLDSL)  |  Country: India

Cities Forum provides embedded technical support to NICDC Logistics Data Services Limited (NLDSL), the data and analytics arm of India's National Industrial Corridor Development Corporation, strengthening the organisation's analytical and planning capabilities at the heart of the country's ambitious industrial-and-logistics transformation. As India builds a network of world-class industrial corridors, the quality of the underlying transport and logistics planning becomes decisive, and Cities Forum's role is to raise that quality through expertise, tools and evidence.

Our approach

The assignment combines embedded technical expertise with strategic advisory services and the advanced use of data and modelling tools. Cities Forum supports multimodal transport and logistics planning, the integration of industrial-area planning with transport networks, and the application of national-level transport models to real corridor and investment questions. In practice this means helping NLDSL move from broad ambition to structured, evidence-based decisions: identifying infrastructure gaps and bottlenecks, testing scenarios for freight movement across road, rail and multimodal options, and aligning the location and sequencing of industrial development with the transport capacity needed to serve it.

What we delivered

A central thread of the work is the generation of robust, evidence-based inputs for investment prioritisation, policy alignment and project structuring, including public-private partnerships. Cities Forum helps translate model outputs and data analysis into the kind of decision-ready material that governments and investors require, prioritised project pipelines, value-for-money and viability assessments, and PPP structuring options that can attract private capital while protecting the public interest. Throughout, the emphasis is on building lasting capability within NLDSL rather than delivering one-off outputs, embedding methods and tools that the organisation can continue to use.

Impact

By strengthening the analytical backbone of India's industrial-corridor programme, Cities Forum contributes to more efficient, better-integrated and lower-carbon freight and logistics planning at national scale. The engagement showcases the firm's ability to operate at the intersection of transport modelling, industrial strategy and infrastructure finance in one of the world's most dynamic logistics markets, and to add value not as a distant adviser but as an embedded technical partner within a flagship national institution.