Maharashtra to build India’s 1st innovation city near Navi Mumbai airport; Tata Sons commits Rs 91,000cr investment

NAGPUR: Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday, announced an ambitious plan at Davos to establish India's first innovation city near Navi Mumbai airport, an urban infrastructure which will offer plug-and-play facilities to researchers and innovators across the globe to start operations.The state has already received a $11 billion (Rs 91,000cr) commitment by Tata Sons to develop the ecosystem, including data centres for the proposed city and the contours have been drawn, he said at the World Economic Forum (WEF). Detailed planning would happen in the next 6 months, after which work is expected to begin. Maharashtra would also be the first state in the country to set up small modular reactors (SMR) for generating atomic electricity. The initiative is in line with the passage of the Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Bill in Parliament. The state has held talks with govt nuclear energy entities in India and Russia. The power generated through SMRs will fulfil the demand of data centres that would come up at the innovation city, he said.The idea stems from last year's WEF meet, which had Artificial Intelligence-based innovation as the theme. At that time, it decided to set up an urban infrastructure along similar lines, which would emerge as a global destination for innovators. "The proposal was taken up with Tata Sons chief Natarajan Chandrasekaran for initial planning. Finally, a year down the line, we are ready to announce the establishment of the innovation city in Navi Mumbai," said Fadnavis.The state is already in talks with innovators from countries across the globe for investing in the proposed innovation city. The idea was put up before investors from around 450 countries, he said. It would emerge as a sustainable city.