India

The US$100 million stadium in Ahmedabad is now the largest cricket ground in the world, with seating for 110,000 people. Designed by Populous and built by Larsen & Toubro over three years, the state-of-the-art venue opened in February on the same 63-acre (25.5-hectare) site as its predecessor. Sardar Patel Stadium more than doubles the capacity of the old venue and holds 10,000 more fans than the previous record holder in Melbourne, Australia.

The 11-kilometer (7-mile) extension of Hyderabad’s Metro Rail at the beginning of 2020 made the metro network India’s second-largest, trailing only Delhi. The expansion connects two of the largest and busiest bus stations in the state of Telangana and slashed travel time from 45 minutes via car to 16 minutes.

The Bengaluru fintech startup partnered with Indian e-commerce company Paytm to introduce the country’s first and largest AIdriven platform for recurring loan (or equated monthly installment) payments in March. The user-friendly collection system came in particularly handy amid the global pandemic: Machine learning helped the company prioritize attention to at-risk customers and predict which methods—SMS, push notifications or messaging apps—were most effective to engage with each segment of users.

With a growing list of accomplishments in space exploration, India needed a place to celebrate that storied history. So the Indian Space Research Organisation collaborated with BM Birla Science Centre to open the country’s first private space museum last year in Hyderabad. Spanning 9,000 square feet (836 square meters), it displays scale models of Indian spacecraft, satellites and rockets as well as the International Space Station.

Towering 359 meters (1,178 feet) into the sky, it will be the world’s tallest rail bridge upon completion in 2022. After a COVID-19 work delay, construction resumed this year on what sponsor Konkan Railways describes as the most challenging project of the company’s recent history. The Chenab Bridge is being constructed with blast-proof steel to withstand potential attacks and sensors to alert trains to stop if the winds are too strong.

Two years after the sustainable farming startup began selling home-growing kits, UrbanKisaan launched an expansion project in 2019 to create its first dedicated vertical hydroponic farms in Hyderabad. The future-focused approach creates supply-chain transparency while using a growing technique that, compared to traditional farms, uses 95 percent less water and delivers 30 times greater yields.

U.S. e-commerce giant Amazon expanded its footprint in India, building its largest campus in Hyderabad. The roughly 10-acre (4-hectare) site, completed in August 2019, became the first office building owned by the company outside the United States, with enough space for 15,000 employees. It could also be a sign of how the supersize company will make its mark in new markets.

Launched in July 2019, the mission marked the Indian Space Research Organisation’s second trip to the moon. The orbiter’s eight instruments have generated data that helps scientists map terrain and surface minerals and measure solar X-rays. Even though the agency lost contact with the lunar lander probe last September, the project is still active, as the team builds lessons learned for the Chandrayaan-3 mission expected to launch in 2021.

Bhubaneswar Smart City Ltd. and Bhubaneswar Municipal Corp. partnered with German Development Cooperation to create an app aimed at preventing flooding in Mu City. Launched as a pilot in two areas of the city in December, it allows government officials to analyze crowdsourced data and prioritize mitigation practices in the most vulnerable areas.

India has a huge appetite for sustainable energy. And it will soon have another key piece of infrastructure to help answer that demand, with Adani Green Energy announcing plans in June for a photovoltaic solar farm that will generate 8 gigawatts of energy over five years. The company says the US$6 billion megaproject will create 400,000 new jobs and displace 900 million tons of carbon dioxide.