<strong>The power of India Stack</strong>

India is home to the largest open API in the world. But it’s not just about creating a record. India Stack been the backbone of the largest democratic identity ecosystem in the world: Aadhaar.

Aadhaar is a paper identity card and paperless too. It has been seamlessly integrated into other services like e-Sign, DigiLocker, eKYC, PAN, GSTN and CoWIN. CoWIN is being transformed with the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM). As you can see, it has a multiplier effect.

Around that time the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) was also created. The biggest hit out of the India Stack stable is UPI, which is probably India’s best tech product and in terms of transactions has claimed the top spot in the world. Not only is it a success in both urban and rural India, but it is being adopted in many countries in the world. We are coming out with the Account Aggregator Network (AAN) that will help share financial data. This will greatly help the credit industry. So, there’s the Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN) too, as this acronym soup is powering the nation.

Another future winner could be the ecommerce platform Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), which was seen as the government’s rival to Amazon and would give a level playing field to India’s small-scale sellers. Interestingly, Amazon itself is joining ONDC, so that’s going to be quite interesting. It is based on the Beckn protocol.

Think tank iSPIRT (Indian Software Products Industry Round Table) is one of the biggest proponents of the India Stack.

As you can see, the applications are endless and recently Bengaluru launched Namma Yatri, an Ola-Uber type service for autos. Within a very short time, tens of thousands of auto drivers jumped on to the bandwagon as did lakhs of users. All these are “Digital Public Goods”, and one could say that India has emerged as a world leader in that.

The Indian government as a tech player seems to be competing with many private tech products and is actually doing a good job at it. It is also digitizing the basic functions of a government. That’s why the term JAM trinity has come into play: Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile. Arguably without the economical smartphone and cheap mobile broadband, this revolution may never have taken place. Financial inclusion is not just a noble concept in India but an actual ground reality.

It is on the strength of all of the above results and those that are expected to follow in the coming decades, that we are aiming to be a tech-powered $10 trillion economy in record time!