When Aadhaar—the 12-digit identity accorded to 1.3 billion Indians–was launched in 2009, none would have imagined the landscape a decade later.
India took the idea of Digital Public Goods (Aadhaar) to completely reinvent its development policy—especially in enabling empowerment.
If Aadhaar monetized identity, then Unified Payments Interface (UPI) completely disrupted the payments business. In fact, in December the transactions involving UPI aggregated 7.82 billion—of which nearly 70% are for sums less than Rs 200. Over the last one year and more India’s use of DPGs has reached a critical mass. Sufficient for the world to sit up and take notice. Overnight it is the talk of the town.
What changed? To understand this and more we spoke to Sharad Sharma, tech evangelist and co-founder of iSpirt—the Bangalore-based non-profit that is the force multiplier for DPGs.
