Tremendous interest from other governments to learn India's platform strategy: Nandan Nilekani

Infosys Chairman Nandan Nilekani.

There is tremendous interest in India from other governments to learn and understand the country’s platform strategy, said Nandan Nilekani, Chairman, Infosys. The country’s successful platform includes UPI, Aadhaar, FASTag, and also CoWIN.

Speaking at the NASSCOM Cloud Summit on August 24, on the theme Digital India: The Platformisation Play’, Nilekani said, “I think there's tremendous interest, especially after the pandemic, a lot of governments are approaching India to see what they can learn.”

According to him, one of the things that the governments can learn is the scale, and it must be efficient, low cost, high volume, and make small transactions possible. “Most importantly, it should be inclusive. It cannot only be for the elites of society, it should be for everybody. Aadhaar was for 1.3 billion people, and the payments stack is for everybody,” he said.

For instance, close to 50 countries had expressed interest in India’s vaccination management platform CoWIN. Its Chief RS Sharma said that the country would create an open-source version to let other countries use them free of cost.

Some of the other most successful platforms include Aadhaar, launched in 2009, FASTag for toll collection and used by 36.3 million people, electronic fund transfer system IMPS that has seen 349.7 million transactions.

Nilekani explained that if the data is strong and secure, opening up platforms through a structured Application Programming Interface (API) that can let other people build apps on top of it will create value.

The report reveals that such open digital platforms can unlock a $700 billion opportunity for India, by creating $500 billion in value and $200 billion in terms of savings to the country. According to the NASSCOM report, Digital India: The Platformisation Play, the growth of open digital ecosystems in the future will be key to India reaching the $5 trillion economy by 2025.