The government has allocated Rs 6,600 crore (€825 million) for the Smart Cities Mission for 2019-20, which is about 7% more as compared to Rs 6,169 crore (about €770 million) for 2018-19. Since the launch of the mission, a total of 5,151 projects worth more than Rs 2,000 billion (€25 billion) have been identified and are in various stages of implementation in 100 cities. 

The government's think-tank NITI Aayog has unveiled a Model Concession Agreement (MCA) for introducing electric buses for public transportation on PPP mode on operational expenditure (per km basis) model. The Aayog stated that the model document has been developed based on international best practices to provide cleaner, more efficient, and affordable public transportation.

The European Union is upbeat on Indian innovators, startups, incubators and accelerators for collaboration in space technology.  The collaboration has been on for almost four years, the two sides are also working together in the space sector on Copernicus and Galileo, the EU’s flagship Earth observation and navigation programmes, respectively. For Galileo, the grouping is promoting startups and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) market applications in India.

The government has reduced the allocation for Startup India programme but added more monies to the Make in India kitty in the Budget 2019-20. The allocation for Startup India programme has been slashed to Rs 25 crore (about €3 million) for 2019-20 from Rs 28 crore (€3.5 million) in 2018-19.  On the other hand, the total allocation for Make in India initiative was increased to Rs 473.3 crore (€ 59 mn) for 2019-20 as against Rs 149 crore (€18.6 mn) in 2018-19.

Telecom Engineering Centre (TEC) has been asked to finalize standards for IoT/M2M as the country aspires to roll out 5G services at par with the rest of the world. The roadmap for M2M communications was released in May 2015 but the centre is yet to finalize generic requirement for the segment. So far, TEC has released Twelve Technical Reports (TRs) in the last three years.

In order to take the benefit of AI and related technologies to the people, Government is planning to launch national program on AI. The program will be catalysed by the establishment of the National Centre for AI. The centre will be established as a hub along with centres of excellence. 9 priority areas had been identified by GoI for the same and a national portal on AI will be developed soon.