‘India’s Rs 50K cr geospatial market set to double to Rs 1.06L cr by 2030’

New Delhi: India’s Rs 50,000-crore geospatial market is set to double to nearly Rs 1.06 lakh crore by 2030, according to Amitabh Kant, Board Member of L&T, HCL, Indigo, and Fairfax Financial Holdings, and former G20 Sherpa and CEO of NITI Aayog.

Addressing the GeoSmart World Conference & Expo 2025 at Bharat Mandapam, Kant said the sector’s rapid expansion must match India’s economic ambition of becoming a $30-trillion economy.

“We opened up the geospatial sector in 2021 after overcoming strong resistance. The potential today is huge, but innovation must move at the pace of India’s ambition. Geospatial technologies are foundational; we cannot build a Viksit Bharat without them,” Kant remarked, urging the industry to make India’s first fully operational geospatial and AI-enabled city a reality within the next 12 months.

He warned that restricted datasets continue to slow innovation and called for open, interoperable, and machine-readable data to make India globally competitive. “Closed data systems are innovation killers,” he said, comparing India’s progress with countries like the UK, Singapore, and the Nordic nations.

Highlighting the ground impact of geospatial technologies, Vivek Bharadwaj, Secretary, Ministry of Panchayati Raj, said that through the SVAMITVA programme, over 3.5 lakh villages have been surveyed and three crore property cards issued, bringing legal clarity and empowering rural citizens. “This is not just mapping, it is rewriting the economic and social story of rural India,” he observed.

Manoj Joshi, Secretary, Department of Land Resources, outlined how India’s Land Stack integrates nationwide base maps and verified plot boundaries, describing precise land mapping as “the backbone of transparent governance and citizen trust.”