DPI will contribute up to 4% to India’s GDP by 2030, report says

India’s digital public infrastructure (DPI) contributed a whopping $31.8 billion to the country’s economy in 2022 and there are projections that it will swell the economy by between 2 and 4 percent by 2030.

This projection is contained in a recent report titled “India’s Digital Public Infrastructure — Accelerating India’s Digital Inclusion,” co-published by Nasscom, an advocacy body for India’s technology industry, and Arthur D. Little, a management consulting firm.

DPI, according to the report, brought 0.9 percent into India’s economy in 2022 and this is expected to triple in the next five years, making the country possibly a trillion-dollar digital economy by that time.

India has been at the forefront of advocacy, including through its G20 presidency mandate, for the development of DPI  as a tool for attaining some important Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The report makes a holistic presentation of India’s DPI ecosystem, an analysis of the past, present and future impact that these DPI will have on the Indian and global economy. It also looks at some of the challenges in the adoption of DPIs.

Per the report, India’s DPI, which include the Aadhaar biometric digital ID, the UPI payments system and the FASTag data sharing platform, has significantly facilitated paperless government and business transactions, enhancing transparency and trust.

With Aadhaar now used by almost all adult Indians, the Nasscom-Arthur D. Little report projects a wider adoption of the DPI tools by 2030, including in remote communities where the digital divide still needs to be closed up. This will be driven by two factors, namely existing digital entities that will evolve to deliver superior user experience, and the enhanced impact of budding DPIs.

“India’s digital journey, beginning with the Aadhaar in 2009, has been transformative. The concept of DPI that emerged has since grown beyond Aadhaar. It has become a catalyst for further innovations, with platforms like UPI and the growth in digital finance just scratching the surface of what’s possible,” said Nandan Nilekani, co-founder and chairman of Infosys and founding chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India.

The publication also notes that India’s pioneering efforts in the development of transformative DPI is sparking interest from many countries, about 30 of them, which are ready to emulate aspects like the UPI payment platform.

The authors say the DPI model of the country “is unique, interoperable, collaborative, equitable, with the inclusive principle that every citizen in the most inaccessible corner of the country has the same opportunity as everyone else,” with the report stating that the system is “projected to yield substantial economic and social impact on a broader scale, creating a widespread revolution which covers every aspect of our society and economy.”

“India is currently the global leader in developing DPIs, using it to implement widespread adoption of digital payments, data-sharing infrastructures, bolstering domestic businesses and spurred entrepreneurship in the country. This has been due to the relentless support by the government and enabled by the IT intellectual capital and start-up ecosystem, a combination which has made DPI a success,” Nasscom President, Debjani Gosh, and Arthur D. Little partner, Satya Easwaran, said in a joint statement.

In order to meet the 2030 DPI projections for India, the report makes some recommendations which must be taken into consideration by government agencies, start-ups and SMEs as well as corporates and big tech.

Aadhaar used 80M times a day for authentication

Meanwhile, Nilekani, in a chat with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, shares insights about the evolution of the Aadhaar digital ID and how it is useful in the Indian economy today.

In the chat published by Business Today TV, Nilekani explained his involvement with the Aadhaar project and his vision for the functional ID, its rapid rise to popularity and expansive adoption.

“About 1.3 billion Indians have access to the Aadhaar and today, it is used 80 million times a day for authentication, KYC and so on,” said Nilekani.

He also spoke about how the digital ID spurred digital and financial inclusion efforts in India, praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi who “embarked on a massive financial inclusion journey” when he came on board as head of government.

Article Topics

Aadhaar  |  biometrics  |  digital ID  |  digital inclusion  |  digital payments  |  digital public infrastructure  |  financial inclusion  |  India