India's recent digital transformation has had a significant impact and produced a completely new framework for economic growth. Technology's participation has produced a digital public infrastructure for the delivery of crucial services to Indian citizens, ranging from identity to financial inclusion, targeted benefits to the most vulnerable, to digital healthcare and education, as well as government services. According to Nandan Nilekani, Chairman and Co-Founder of Infosys and Founding Chairman of UIDAI (Aadhaar), India was able to accomplish what would have taken 47 years using conventional methods in just 9 years. “Over the last several years, India has transformed in many ways and this digital transformation is at the heart of economic growth.”

 

Nilekani spoke about India’s digital journey stating, “It began with the ID system called Aadhaar. The idea was to give a digital ID to every Indian. And today 1.3 billion Indians have this digital ID. It provides for online authentication of identities using your fingerprint, Iris, OTP (one time password), and face. And that system does 80 million transactions a day, which means 80 million times some Indian is using his Aadhaar to do an online verification.”

 

Later, it became necessary to complete this online verification, also known as Know Your Customer (KYC), in order to open a bank account or obtain a cellphone connection. More services, including digi locker, digital signature, and unified payment interface (for mobile immediate payments), were provided on top of these building blocks.

 

All of this, which came together between 2014 and 2016, proved to be the cornerstones for India to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, whether it was the transfer of $4.5 billion into the bank accounts of 160 million beneficiaries or the facilitation of the distribution of 2.5 million vaccinations over the course of two years and assistance for Indians to obtain vaccination certificates on their mobile devices in real time.