Urban data in India is vast, valuable but often can be difficult to use.
The City Data & Analytics Platform (CDAP) was created to change that.

CDAP is a microsite of NITI Aayog’s National Data & Analytics Platform (NDAP), conceived, created, and operated by Janaagraha.. Socialbytes partnered as the technology enabler, supporting the design and development of a scalable, analytics-ready urban data platform.

Today, CDAP brings together ~1,00,000 urban data points across national, state, district, and city levels — enabling place-based insights, cross-city comparisons, and more informed decision-making for policymakers, researchers, and citizens.

The Challenge

Urban governance relies on timely, reliable data, yet most data exists in:

• Silos across departments and missions
• Formats that are difficult to access, explore, interpret or compare
• Static reports with limited spatial or temporal analysis

As a result, decision-makers often struggled to:

• Compare cities or regions meaningfully
• Track trends over time
• Translate raw data into everyday insights

The need was clear: a unified, intuitive platform that makes urban data usable — not just available. A platform that can easily be used by policymakers, researchers, city leaders and citizens.

The Approach

CDAP was designed with a strong emphasis on usability, scalability, and analytical depth.

Working closely with Janaagraha, we focused on building a platform that could:

• Integrate diverse datasets seamlessly
• Support advanced analytics without overwhelming users
• Scale across geographies, indicators, and use cases
• Perform reliably as a public-facing data platform

The goal was not to build “another dashboard”, but a data ecosystem that supports how people actually work with data.

The Solution

The City Data & Analytics Platform (CDAP) enables users to:

• Explore urban data across national, state, district, and city levels
• Navigate data using geographic, sectoral, and indicator-based views
• Perform cross-sectoral and cross-geographic comparisons
• Analyse time-series trends to understand how cities evolve
• Visualise data through map-based analysis
• Create and save custom dashboards and workspaces
• Download charts, maps and data for reports, briefs, and presentations as well as private dataset comparisons

All within a single, unified platform.

Technology & Capabilities

Socialbytes supported CDAP with a robust, future-ready technical foundation, including:

• Automated data pipelines for seamless updates
• Advanced analytics to surface patterns and trends
• Spatial (GIS) and temporal analysis capabilities
• Custom dashboards for tailored exploration
• Mobile-friendly access for insights on the go
• Scalable architecture aligned with national-level data systems

Impact

CDAP has transformed how urban data is accessed and used:

• ~1,00,000 data points already live across multiple governance levels
• Improves transparency and accessibility of urban data
• Enables place-based and evidence-led decision-making
• Provides cross-city, cross-sector, and time-series analysis and visualization
• Supports researchers, policymakers, and citizens with reliable insights
• Strengthens the foundation for data-driven urban planning and governance

Our Role

As the technology partner, Socialbytes contributed across the platform lifecycle:

• Ideation of Application design and user experience (UX)
• Platform architecture and platform design
• Data integration and pipeline development
• Analytics, dashboards, and visualisation workflows
• Performance, scalability, and reliability engineering

Our role was to ensure that the platform remains stable, intuitive, and extensible — ready to grow with evolving data and governance needs.

Looking Ahead

CDAP lays the groundwork for a more transparent, analytical, and responsive urban governance ecosystem. As datasets expand and usage grows, the platform is positioned to evolve into a critical public resource for understanding and shaping India’s cities.

🔗 Explore the platform: https://citydata.org.in

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