U-CAN Newsletter

Hello and welcome to the first edition of this newsletter in 2025! This year, we’re scaling up our initiatives—from the fellowship to our webinar series—while driving forward key program priorities.

It’s been a busy but exciting start, fueled by persistence and a renewed commitment to building something meaningful for the urban sector.

So, what are we looking forward to in 2025? Our first program priority is our Small Grants Initiative which we have intentionally named Request for Collaboration. At U-CAN, we’ve spent and we continue to spend a considerable amount of time thinking about the big C - collaboration. What does it mean for organisations working within the urban sector to collaborate? What form does this collaboration take? What drives organisations to want to collaborate with others? These and many more questions are those we have thought of, reflected upon and discussed with others within our network. What we have also seen is that collaborations between organisations have immense potential to view urban challenges through a multi-sectoral and intersectional lens, especially when the people involved bring complementary skills and perspectives to the table. Keeping this in mind and after many months of work on designing our Small Grants Initiative, we’ll be launching it for our member organisations in February. Our goal under this initiative is to experiment with and learn from bold and radical ideas that push the boundaries of traditional partnerships and work being done in the urban sector.

Second, our core mission is to bring organisations together and spark collaboration. We plan to organise in-person convenings in three cities - Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai, as well as online convenings which will involve innovative ways of problem-solving for urban challenges. We will be spending the next few weeks in building these convenings with our members, and we'd love to hear from you if you have any ideas!

Given the scaling of our programs and operations, we are also thinking about how we can reach out to more audiences through our communications, including this newsletter. As you may have noticed, we have reimagined the content and design of this newsletter, with the aim of providing a roundup of what's happening in our cities, highlighting the incredible work of our members, and including interesting and engaging factoids and resources about urban India. This is a learning journey for us, and as always, feel free to write back to us with your feedback, suggestions and recommendations!

Siddharth Pandit

CEO, Urban Collective Action Network · On behalf of U-CAN

India’s urban landscape is complex, and understanding it requires access to diverse knowledge resources. Fortunately, several platforms offer rich insights - from NITI Aayog's Urbanisation

Knowledge Hub, the many reports by organisations like Janaagraha, Praja and WRI. These →

resources help us analyse urban challenges and drive informed action. Explore these sections to know more!

As part of their work on heat action in cities, Mahila Housing Trust is extending its greening efforts under Jodhpur’s Heat Action Plan. They’ve planted 1700+ saplings of native trees including Kaner, Khari Badam and Gulmohar - chosen due to their adaptability to the local context of Jodhpur.

eGov Foundation’s Viraj Tyagi shares his thoughts on why solving complex wicked problems →

requires investing time in co-creating ecosystems where collaboration drives impact. →

The second cohort of Reap Benefit’s Changemaker Fundees - young guns making a serious dent →

in civic and climate challenges across India - was announced. Funding is a common challenge across the change-making ecosystem. The Changemaker Fund bridges this gap, supporting young people who are ready to tackle challenges in their communities, but need a boost to turn their bold ideas into action.

The number of digital payments users from urban areas in India is 64% according to a report by TransUnion CIBIL and endorsed by the Reserve Bank of India’s Currency and Finance Report in 2024. While the share of rural users is witnessing a faster uptake in terms of new unique users, the market is currently dominated by users in urban and peri-urban areas.

India’s digital payments infrastructure, led by the Unified Payments Interface, has also expanded to countries beyond India, while the Indian government is working with many other governments to expand this list even further. India’s rapidly expanding digital payment ecosystem is an example of how Digital Public Infrastructure can rapidly transform a sector. To understand how DPI systems

work, watch our most recent webinar with Gautham Ravichander from eGov Foundation and →

Sridhar Ganapathy from Artha Global. →

In this section, we'll bring you our recommendations of books or movies every month!

If you love mysteries with a strong sense of place, Harini Nagendra’s Bangalore Detectives Club series brings 1920s Bangalore to life through the sharp-witted sleuth Kaveri Murthy. Across three books, Kaveri unravels crimes in a city teeming with colonial-era intrigue—be it a glamorous theater, a bustling market, or the tranquil but deceptive lakesides. Each mystery is richly woven with history, culture, and social change, offering a vivid portrait of Bangalore’s past. Whether you’re a history enthusiast or a detective fiction fan, this series is a captivating journey into the city’s hidden stories!