An initiative supported by The Convergence Foundation

Reports to: Initiative Sponsor and designated governing body

About URBAN Project

India is urbanising rapidly, and its cities are where the country’s economic future will be decided. Services already form the largest part of the Indian economy, and well-functioning cities are essential to sustaining services-led growth and creating jobs at scale. Yet urbanisation in India has often been unplanned and under-resourced, leaving cities struggling with weak planning, a difficult business setting, fragmented governance, and chronic under-financing. Getting urbanisation right – rapid yet sustainable – is one of the highest-leverage opportunities for India’s economic transformation.

The Urban Initiative is supported by The Convergence Foundation, the Urban Initiative is being established to help India build the policy ecosystem needed to drive economic growth through rapid and sustainable urbanisation.



It will work systemically—developing policy perspectives and partnering with the government to advance reform—rather than engaging in on-ground implementation. Its work will be organised around four interconnected pillars:
- Regional economic and spatial planning: Creating regional economic plans that feed into better, more growth-oriented master plans for cities and their surrounding regions.
- Ease of doing business: Enabling more sensible development control norms and regulations that make it easier to build, invest and do business in cities.
- Governance: Strengthening how cities are managed, including the devolution of power to empowered, accountable city governments.
- Financing: Ensuring cities are adequately funded and well managed – through better allocation of public money, raising local resources, and involving the private sector through PPP and other models.

Across each pillar, the initiative will build a strong policy perspective, drawing on best practices from better-run Indian cities as well as relev

📌 Head of Urban Initiative (Delhi)
🏢 The Convergence Foundation
📍 Delhi