Mumbai Launches Metaverse Metropolis to Showcase City Infrastructure Megaprojects

JAKARTA - On February 19, Mumbai, the financial capital of India, introduced the metaverse initiative to showcase the city's recently launched and upcoming mega infrastructure projects.

The initiative called Mumbai Metropolis Metaverse was launched as a free-for-all platform, allowing users to explore various development initiatives in Mumbai and its nearby cities through 3D and virtual reality (VR).

Mumbai recently inaugurated roads built over the Arabian Sea to reduce congestion, improve connectivity, and promote cleaner air. The city also ordered several other infrastructure projects, including underground and underwater tunnels for intracity travel. The Mumbai metaverse app aims to share this vision with users through an interactive user interface.

The initiative was announced on February 19 by Devendra Fadnavis, deputy chief minister of Maharashtra, at X, where he invited users across the world to witness the "transformation".

Mumbai Metropolis Metaverse will help citizens virtually monitor the progress of mega projects that impact their daily lives. Metaverse can be accessed via websites or apps available in Google and Apple app stores.

Parallel to the state government's metaverse initiative to showcase urban planning and development, India's central bank recently announced plans to explore offline solutions to increase adoption of its central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital rupee, in remote areas of the country who have limited internet access.

During the Monetary Policy Committee review meeting on February 8, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das said:

"He plans to introduce offline functionality in CBDC-R to enable transactions in areas with poor or limited internet connections. This functionality will be gradually introduced through pilots."

Plans for an offline CBDC were first proposed in March 2023 when Ajay Kumar Choudhary, executive director of the RBI, said the central bank was looking to test the potential of CBDCs for cross-border transactions and connectivity with legacy systems.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) — an initiative led by the RBI and India's 247 banking companies — began recruiting for blockchain technology in the fourth quarter of 2023. Candidates at that time were primarily tasked with identifying "ways in which blockchain-based solutions can be used ."