India’s diversity necessitates diverse solutions, says Aadhaar's Pramod Varma

Varma was also the chief technology officer of Infosys and is known for pioneering the concept of the digital public goods.

The diversity in India requires diverse solutions, said Pramod Varma, the former chief architect of Aadhaar & India Stack and chief technology officer (CTO) of the Ekstep Foundation, calling out to entrepreneurs to build on the Indian digital public infrastructure (DPI).

“We are 1.4 billion people, so we are pretty diverse. Such diversity necessitates diversity of solutioning as well. The enormous amount of startup and entrepreneurial energy needs to build on top of the DPIs,” Varma said at the Nasscom Technology Leadership Forum (NTLF) 2023.

Varma was also the chief technology officer of Infosys and is known for pioneering the concept of the digital public goods. “I joined Nandan (Nilekani) as a volunteer to help out with Aadhaar,” he said.

Varma, who was also the chief architect for various India Stack layers such as eSign, Digital Locker, Unified Payment Interface (UPI), and Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA), was in conversation with Nasscom president Debjani Ghosh about the digital public infrastructure and the opportunities it provides.

He shared how the idea of the UPI was coined during a brainstorming session between him, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) managing director and chief executive officer Dilip Asbe, and Nandan Nilekani, co-founder and non-executive director of Infosys Technologies, in 2013.

“We thought if you can send instant messages, why is it so hard to send money? We started building on the idea of UPI and in 2014 we started writing the protocol and in 2015 we launched the pilot. In 2016, demonetisation happened which gave it the boost,” he said.

Varma said that while credit cards were used by 22 million people, UPI is now used by 500 million people.

“If we can continue to do that for affordable access to healthcare, skill in education, and business opportunities, and if we can make that happen, we are going to be extremely powerful,” Varma added.