India’s DPI empowers 97% of population, expands beyond Aadhaar, UPI: Report

Bengaluru, Dec 12

India’s current digital public infrastructure (DPI) landscape has provided 97 per cent of the population with a digital ID, facilitated direct benefit transfer (DBT) to the effect of 900 million beneficiaries till date and has even given 40 per cent of the 1.2 billion population access to banking facilities, a report showed on Tuesday.

India’s DPI has expanded beyond Aadhaar and unified payments interface (UPI), creating impact across sectors, including e-commerce, gaming, fintech, banking and MSMEs.

According to the report by Redseer Strategy Consultants in collaboration with Infosys Chairman Nandan Nilekani, DPIs have not just impacted governance but also the private sector, especially startups.

It has a symbiotic relationship with the startup ecosystem adding over $100 billion in value across multiple sectors of the Indian Internet economy, the report mentioned.

The landscape is currently expanding beyond the JAM trinity (Jan Dhan, Aadhar, Mobile) with properties such as Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA), DigiLocker 2.0, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), Account Aggregator (AA), Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing (Diksha) among others.

“The availability of zero merchant discount rates (MDR) have boosted the popularity of UPI in the e-commerce space.

“Mobility accounts for 65 per cent of the e-commerce payments with foodtech following closely at 50 per cent and e-tailing at 35 per cent. Emerging platforms such as ONDC are also seeing a greater degree of popularity in the MSME space owing to their open architecture and affordability,” the report mentioned.

Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) itself could generate a Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) ranging from $250-300 billion by 2030.

Additionally, the evolving DPI landscape has also boosted gaming monetisation by 20-25 per cent, bringing in $27 billion in transaction value to the online gaming industry, said the report.