India's digital infra invites global interest: Infosys's Nandan Nilekani

Open digital ecosystems will unlock opportunities worth $700 billion for India by 2030, across sectors like healthcare, agriculture, MSME education, urban governance, as per a report by ONI and BCG

The digital infrastructure has seen great interest from governments abroad, said Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani on Tuesday.

Speaking at National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom's) maiden Cloud Summit, Nilekani said, "I think there is tremendous interest, especially after the pandemic. Governments are approaching India to see what they can learn... Anything you do must be population scale, it must be efficient and low cost and high volume. Small transactions (should) be possible, and most important, it should be inclusive. It cannot only be for the elites of society, it should be good for everybody."

Open digital ecosystems will unlock opportunities worth $700 billion for India by 2030, across sectors like healthcare, talent, agriculture, micro, small and medium enterprises, education, urban governance, law and justice, logistics, state service delivery, and e-land records as per a report by ONI and BCG.

Nasscom launched a report titled "Digital India: The Platformisation Play" at the event.

“As we move on from products to platforms, it is commendable to see how these platforms are now taking over the world. We aim to witness a sea change from making the government services available to people in a more efficient yet convenient manner, where both state and central governments come together and harmonize their development as a whole. Such a platform can not only bridge the silos we work in but also helps us organize our data and processes, deployment of emerging technologies creating tremendous value for all stakeholders,” said Ajay Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.  

The three of the largest public digital platforms in the world, Aadhar, UPI, and CoWIN, are from India which have significantly fast-tracked the country’s pivot to digitalization and are integral to the $5 trillion dollar economy aspiration.

WhileAadhaar has over 1.3 billion registrations, more than 30 million users on the Mygov Corona Helpdesk, over 500 million vaccine doses administered through CoWin platform, and 3.2 billion transactions on BHIM UPI platform in July 2021.

Nearly 50 countries have expressed interest in CoWIN, said India's National Health Authority CEO RS Sharma at the same event.

“Our robust public digital platforms have been the bedrock of India’s digital advantage. The government’s focus on digitalization combined with the industry’s innovation quotient can translate into grassroot level of digital integration across sectors and industries. With digital platforms like Aadhar, CoWIN, GEMS, etc, we have truly shown the world to build the foundation for a scalable digital economy impacting over billion of lives,” said Debjani Ghosh, President, Nasscom.