Work has started on a home-built bullet train which will exceed 250 kilometre per hour (kmph). The designs are being prepared at the Indian Railways' Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai.

The made-in-India bullet trains will run on the north, south, east corridors which were recently announced. The new corridors will use more of Indian technology and domestic manufacturing. Globally, high-speed trains run at over 250 kmph such as the French TGV and the Japanese Shinkansen. These will complement the western corridor which was developed with Japanese collaboration and technology.

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is providing a soft loan of about Rs 40,000 crore for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail project. The total project cost is upward of Rs 1.08 lakh crore. Japanese technology is also used for the bullet trains which will run on the line between Ahmedabad to Mumbai, and  Shinkansen E5 series bullet trains, which India will deploy on this route, can reach 320 kmph. ICF builds the indigenously developed Vande Bharat trains. 

The (proposed) variant Vande Bharat trains can now reach from zero to 100 kmph in 52 seconds while the existing bullet trains do this in 54 seconds. 

National High Speed Rail Corporation (NHSRCL) recently announced that 300 km of pier work had been completed for the bullet train project.