Interview | Invest India CTO on turbocharging National Single Window

Aditya Sharma

India’s National Single Window System, which has a proven track record of a year now, can be a game changer for ease of doing business. It seeks to be the one-stop digital platform for investors to obtain most central and state approvals needed to start business operations.

The Centre expects to bring all states on board by March 2023 and is aiming to enable reverse integration with states’ single windows, allowing investors to move seamlessly between the national and state platforms. The platform should also soon have user-friendly features like alerts for business renewals.

Leading the charge is Aditya Sharma, chief product and technology officer at Invest India, the national investment promotion and facilitation agency.

“We have reached the stage where our proof of concept has been successful and we have identified the product-market fit,” Sharma told Moneycontrol. “We are absolutely sure that in the next three to six months, the product expansion and operationalisation will be complete. It will mature over the next one year or so because our ecosystem is so big.”

The income tax department’s Permanent Account Number is likely to be chosen as the unique identifier that will be used for integrating the national and state windows, Sharma said, adding that the rollout could happen by the end of the month.

Also read: How to use National Single Window to kickstart your business

Path to accountability

As the National Single Window System matures, data on time taken for approvals will lead to greater accountability as it can pinpoint areas for improvements and roadblocks to be removed, said Sharma, who joined Invest India in 2016 after several years in the private sector.

“Showing a dashboard of performance in the single window system will have a big impact. It will close the information gap between departments and leadership. That is what our next step is.”

Following several previous failed attempts at nation single windows, India seems to have finally got it right.

“This time, we have actually hit where it hurts. The ecosystem, which was benefiting from red-tapism, has started hitting back,” Sharma said. “Sometimes, a small mistake is blown out of proportion. More than 25,000 approvals have been granted so far. Around 30,000 approvals have been applied for. In 1 or 2 percent cases, there are technical problems, like payments not going through.”

But he is confident the system is built to last. The more it is used, the stronger it will become, he said.

Getting the single window right

When Invest India took up the challenge of working on the National Single Window System in mid-2020, in the middle of a raging pandemic, it was very clear that it would take a collaborative yet innovative approach.

Single window system “is probably the most abused word in bureaucracy,” Sharma said.

“Everybody claims that we have created a single window system but everybody knows what the reality is—you still have to submit the information at different places, the processes are complicated, you have to give the same set of documents again and again and there is no certainty of timelines,” he added.

Throughout the process of convincing departments and states to come on board, government secretaries offered massive support, goading their staff to do more quickly, the chief technology officer said.

“Invest India works in a very delicate spot. We know what the challenges are and we cannot complain as we have to work with the same people who often push back.”

Hence, the focus has been to make the platform technologically superior and to ensure that even if there are errors, they can be fixed quickly and permanently.

Sharma’s young six-member team, all of them lateral placements, spoke to those who were part of previous attempts at forming national single window systems.

Based on feedback that such a system would have thousands of components, all of which could change autonomously, the Invest India team built a technology architecture that was conducive for change.

“Around 90 percent of the architecture can be changed fairly quickly. If tomorrow the definition of a startup changes, our system should be able to adapt to it in a matter of days,” Sharma said.

Invest India whittled the list of approvals to the most common, and asked departments and states to spruce up their own systems.

It brought on two very different IT vendors, Tata Consultancy Services and To The New, to help in its iterative approach for the platform.

Gearing for small businesses, states

So far, the National Single Widow has been used by dozens of India’s large corporations and conglomerates. A large number of small businesses are also using the platform to kick-start their operations.

To facilitate small businesses, Invest India is now seeking to revise the common application form so they don’t have to bother adding too many details, the chief technology officer said.

While several states in India have functional single window systems, several others do not. Invest India has given states the option to piggyback on the national system’s infrastructure free of cost to revamp their windows.

“Our platform is created in a manner that the whole process can be done in a matter of two to three months, which is usually the time required to bring out a tender!”