<p>Urban local governments in India are increasingly prioritising digital adoption to boost service delivery, fiscal sustainability, transparency and decision-making. Building onthe advancements around digital public infrastructure (DPI) in India, cities are harnessing an urban DPI approach for functions like tax collection, licensing, citizen grievance redressal and real-time monitoring of service provision. Drawing on implementation experiences from four Indian states at the fore front of digital adoption, our study aims are three fold: (1) map the policy and institutional context for digital transformation among urban local governments in India; (2) identify benefits accruing from digital adoption, and (3) identify key levers that influence progress. In our selected states we find clear evidence that digitalisation is contributing to India’s constitutional vision of improved urban governance by improving public service quality, efficiency and public financial management. At the same time, results also demonstrate that digitalisation of ULBs cannot be considered as a one-time initiative but a progressive journey that is influenced by multiple factors that lie at the intersection of people, process and technology. Key levers to transformation include empowering ULBs with standardised digital tools and governance frameworks; strengthening capacities of municipal staff and elected representatives; ensuring citizen-centric and inclusive digital services; ensuring appropriate technological and institutional interventions at all stages of digitalisation. We thus argue that the digital imperative for urban local governments in India is to transform not just the front-end citizen interface, but the underlying processes, data-flows and institutional capabilities to meet the service demands of rapidly urbanising India and improve fiscal sustainability, transparency and ease of doing business in India's cities that are central to its economic growth and development.</p>