The city of Varanasi has launched a global call for innovators as part of the Toyota Mobility Foundation’s $9m Sustainable Cities Challenge. The initiative aims to find data-driven solutions to enhance the safety and accessibility in the city for the millions of pilgrims who visit every year.
The Varanasi challenge focuses on managing the influx of visitors and improving infrastructure, especially for older adults and people with disabilities, in order to make Varanasi a model of sustainable urban development.
Varanasi is known as the nation’s ‘spiritual capital’. The influx of tourists, along with the city’s narrow lanes and dense urban fabric, raises safety and overcrowding concerns. Reports indicate that Varanasi attracts around 70 million visitors annually, underscoring the urgent need to improve the city’s safety and accessibility, particularly for the predominantly middle-aged and elderly tourists.
Leveraging technology, data analytics, urban design, behavioral psychology, and crowd science can provide valuable insights into crowd dynamics and flow. These innovative approaches are key to better crowd management and reducing congestion, particularly in cities like Varanasi, which sees millions of visitors each year.
The innovators and companies that participate in the challenge will receive a share of $3 million of implementation grant funding, and gain exclusive insight into the workings of the ancient city of Varanasi and a real-world understanding of user-centered design.
Pras Ganesh, Executive Program Director, Toyota Mobility Foundation, said, “As Toyota Mobility Foundation, we work under the three principles of innovation, partnership and leaving a sustainable legacy, and believe that this project has the potential to develop innovative but human centric crowd management solutions that can also be applied to other cities facing similar issues.”
Pawan Mulukutla, Executive Director of Integrated Transport, Clean Air & Hydrogen, Sustainable Cities and Transport, WRI India, said, “In 2022, Varanasi’s floating population was estimated to be 35 times of its local population. The Sustainable Cities Challenge fosters technology-driven innovative solutions aimed at transforming the public spaces and streets of the city. The Challenge seeks innovative mobility solutions that can be tested, adapted and scaled to suit local contexts, while advancing low-carbon mobility across geographies.”
Varanasi is one of the three cities to host this challenge, including, Detroit, USA and Venice, Italy. Over 150 cities from 46 countries around the world joined the challenge after the announcement was made in June 2023. Applications for the Varanasi Challenge are open until September 5. Up to ten semi-finalists will be chosen in November 2024, each receiving a $50,000 grant to customize and demonstrate their solutions. In May 2025, up to five finalists will be awarded $130,000 each to test their solutions on a larger scale. By March 2026, up to three winners will be selected to share $1.5 million in funding for full implementation in the city.
