India’s digital infra attracting global interest: Nilekani

The digital infrastructure has seen great interest from governments abroad, Infosys Cofounder Nandan Nilekani said on Tuesday.

“I think there is tremendous interest, especially after the pandemic. Governments are approaching India to see what they can learn... Anything you do must be population scale, it must be efficient and low cost and high volume,” Nilekani said at the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom's) maiden Cloud Summit.

“Small transactions (should) be possible, and most important, it should be inclusive. It cannot only be for the elites of the society, it should be good for everybody,” Nilekani said.

Open digital ecosystems will unlock opportunities worth $700 billion for India by 2030, across sectors like health care, talent, agriculture, micro, small and medium enterprises, education, urban governance, law and justice, logistics, state service delivery, and e-land records according to a report by ONI and BCG.

Nasscom launched a report titled “Digital India: The Platformisation Play" at the event.

Ajay Sawhney, secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, said: “As we move on from products to platforms, it is commendable to see how these platforms are now taking over the world. We aim to witness a sea change from making the government services available to people in a more efficient yet convenient manner, where both state and central governments come together and harmonise their development as a whole.”

The three of the largest public digital platforms in the world, Aadhaar, UPI, and COWIN, are from India, which have fast-tracked the country’s pivot to digitalisation and are integral to the $5-trillion economy aspiration.

While Aadhaar has over 1.3 billion registrations, there are more than 30 million users on the Mygov Corona Helpdesk, over 500 million vaccine doses administered through the COWIN platform, and 3.2 billion transactions on the BHIM UPI platform in July 2021.