Author Names: R. Srinivasan, Vikas N. Prabhu, Anuradha Sharma, Nayanika Chakraborty, Chaitrali Bhoi (2025)
The inaugural edition of the ‘State of DPI in India 2025’ report, an evidence-based assessment of how India’s Digital Public Infrastructure has evolved across foundational and sectoral systems, was jointly released by Protean eGov Technologies Ltd., one of India’s foremost Digital Public Infrastructure institutions, and the Center for Digital Public Goods (CDPG), IIM Bangalore’s knowledge and research hub on DPGs, on 4th Dec. 2025 at IIMB. The report marks the beginning of an annual effort to systematically document and analyze the evolution of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) across key sectors in India.
The ’State of DPI in India’ 2025 report, is co-authored by Prof. R Srinivasan (Chairperson, CDPG); Dr. Vikas N. Prabhu (IIMB PhD programme alumnus), Anuradha Sharma (IIMB PhD programme scholar); Nayanika Chakraborty (Former Research Associate, CDPG) and Chaitrali Bhoi (Research Associate, CDPG)
The first edition focuses on two sectors that represent contrasting stages of DPI adoption: financial services, where DPI implementation has seen significant maturity and impact, and healthcare, where adoption is still nascent and faces structural and operational challenges.
The report outlines DPI’s rationale, core benefits, building-block architecture, and implementation pathways. It traces the foundations laid by the JAM trinity (Jan Dhan bank accounts, Aadhaar enrolment, and Mobile phone penetration) and evaluates the role of key DPIs across financial services, including Aadhaar, APB, eKYC, eSign, DigiLocker, UPI, AePS, RuPay, Bharat Connect, DEPA, Account Aggregators, OCEN, and ONDC Finance. In healthcare, it maps the public and private provider of ecosystem, insurance, non-clinical and technical services, and veterinary medicine to assess the breadth of emerging DPI impact. The analysis also affirms that India’s DPI ecosystem is now delivering at population scale. Its infrastructure-led approach, which is rooted in public-interest technology, market innovation, and regulatory guardrails, has improved transparency, accountability, cost efficiency, and reach, especially for underserved populations.
It also contextualizes how the future of DPIs transitioning from ‘implementation’ to ‘adoption’ to ‘leverage’ stages is dependent on four major themes: technology leverage; integrating the incentives of ‘Samaj, Sarkar, and Bazaar’ (citizens, governments, and markets) – a framework developed by Rohini Nilekani; data governance; and the push towards digital sovereignty. The report positions India’s DPI approach as a global “middle-path” model, neither fully state-run nor exclusively market-led. It argues that India’s next frontier lies in strengthening trust, governance, and institutional capacity; accelerating interoperability; and enabling responsible AI adoption, all while safeguarding inclusion and digital sovereignty.
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View the flipbook here
Author Names: R Srinivasan, Anirban Sarma, Pranjal Sharma, Manisha Rathi, Anulekha Nandi, Pramoth Kumar Joseph, Tanush Tyagi, Anuradha Sharma, Basu Chandola (2025)
Abstract: This publication was inspired by a day-long stakeholder engagement event co-hosted by the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) at the IIMB campus in August 2024.
Titled “Decoding DPI: Scripting Inclusive Digital Futures”, the event brought together experts, practitioners, and institutions who are helping shape India’s DPI ecosystem, and technology thinkers and researchers in the domain. The event focused on three themes: the key principles that ought to be kept in mind when designing and rolling out DPIs; the private provisioning of public infrastructure; and the implications of DPI for innovation and competition. The three main chapters of this volume address these themes, and for each of them, the authors have taken key issues identified during the discussions and supplemented them with further research and analysis. Chapter 2, ‘The DPI Principles Guiding India’s Digital Ascent’, by Manisha Rathi and Anulekha Nandi, unpacks five principles or sutras governing the design of DPIs.
They include: ensuring citizen’s agency and privacy; promoting interoperability through the use of open standards and APIs; crafting techno-legal regulation, or combining public technology with law to ensure the ethical use of tech; preventing corporatisation and private monopolies; and safeguarding DPIs against weaponisation. Chapter 3, ‘Private Provisioning of Digital Public Infrastructure’, by Pramoth Kumar Joseph and Tanusha Tyagi, examines the concept of privately provisioned public goods, and its relevance and application to DPIs. It investigates instances of private sector participation in DPI implementation that have enhanced DPIs’ impact, analyses why such involvement is necessary, and goes on to propose public-private partnership models for developing DPIs that embed a viable profit motive for private actors. Chapter 4, ‘Digital Public Infrastructure: Balancing Innovation and Competition’, by Anuradha Sharma and Basu Chandola, explores how DPIs have unleashed innovation and entrepreneurship by allowing enterprises to design novel applications atop the DPI layers. This has galvanised competition and improved consumer experience. But while DPIs’ creation of a relatively level playing field for businesses is widely celebrated, the chapter warns that sometimes they could paradoxically foreclose the possibility of competition and produce new monopolies instead.
The publication’s concluding chapter, by its editors, brings together the principal findings and recommendations from Chapters 2–4, and points to certain new phenomena, such as the convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and DPI, that must increasingly be navigated. As the twenty-first century reaches its quarter-way mark, DPI is entrenching itself in the lives and imaginations of citizens and nations across the world. Not only has it redefined citizen-state-enterprise interactions domestically, it has also positioned India as a digital partner of choice for the Global South and a natural development partner for much of the North. Against this background, the present publication hopes to spark further conversations and debates about DPI’s foundational ethos, its evolving architecture, its strengths and weaknesses, and what it could mean for our collective digital futures.
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Author Names: Anjula Gurtoo, Jyotirmoy Dutta, Minnu Malieckal, R. Srinivasan, Chaitrali Bhoi (2025)
This Policy White Paper have been developed by IIM Bangalore’s Center for Digital Public Goods (CDPG) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc). This handbook is intended to shape India’s approach towards management and governance of Non-Personal Data (NPD). By proposing these guidelines to Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), we address critical gaps in data sharing, data quality, ethical usage, data usage pricing models and policy enforcement.
The guidelines intend to elaborate on the existing governance framework, enable seamless data sharing and ethical use of data and empower data principals, data fiduciary, data processor and data consumers to share and use data. The framework aims to unlock the economic potential for Non-Personal Data in India to innovate, train AI models and enhance governance within data economies. The framework empowers the stakeholders by clearly defining their roles and responsibilities in the Non-Personal Data Management Value Chain. This framework encompasses a consent framework, transparency mechanisms, right to privacy (of their non-personal data) and accountability standards for the Data Principal. The emphasis on empowerment of Data Principal is the focus of the governing policy framework for management of non-personal data. We invite all interested stakeholders from academia, government and industry to provide comments on this Policy White Paper which will shape this white paper into final recommendation. You can provide your comments and feedback by reaching out to us at cdpg[at]iimb[dot]ac[dot]in and anjula[at]iisc[dot]ac[dot]in
Abstract: This paper examines combinatorial innovation, positing that significant technological and societal advancements frequently stem from the novel recombination of existing components, ideas and technologies rather than radical invention. Using India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) as a case study, it dissects how the National Payments Corporation of India created a globally impactful, transformative digital payment ecosystem through the strategic integration of existing elements, including real-time fund transfer mechanisms, application programming interface standards, third-party payment initiation models and QR code technology. The paper highlights UPI’s role as quintessential digital public infrastructure, illustrating how robust public infrastructure can be rapidly and cost-effectively assembled and deployed through combinatorial innovation. By analysing UPI’s rapid adoption, massive scale and profound impact on financial inclusion and merchant acceptance, this paper demonstrates how combinatorial innovation can lead to groundbreaking solutions without having to create new building blocks. Furthermore, UPI exemplifies reverse innovation: a solution developed for an emerging market that is now inspiring developed economies. The paper discusses the implications of this approach for fostering innovation and identifies an existing gap in network-level interoperability within the QR code ecosystem, presenting a missed opportunity for even greater resilience and competitiveness.
Author Names: Balakrishnan, M.; R. Srinivasan (2025)
Journal Name: Journal of Payment Strategy & Systems Vol. 19(3)
URL: https://ideas.repec.org/a/aza/jpss00/y2025v19i3p291-308.html
Presented at BIS Conference on Advancing Cross-Border Payments: Identifying Opportunities and Challenges for Sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa, Oct 2025, held as part of the G20 Summit.
Abstract: The paper provides a corridor-level analysis of remittance cost patterns in Sub-Saharan Africa, showing how infrastructure and inclusion gaps drive high costs. It argues for targeted reforms and regional systems to enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and improve financial access.
Authors’ Names: Balakrishnan, M., R Srinivasan., and Amar Saxena. (2025)
Watch Policy Presentation here
In an increasingly dynamic and uncertain environment, logistics management has become a key strategic component for organizations to maintain a competitive edge. While digital platforms have improved visibility, coordination, and efficiency in logistics, existing research often examines these benefits in isolation, lacking a comprehensive understanding of their impact on all stakeholders. The paper addresses this gap by delving into the question of how a digital B2B platform transform logistics management in manufacturing firms taking a multi-stakeholder perspective.
The study focuses on RoaDo, a B2B digital logistics management platform in India, to explore the research question. The authors conducted in-depth interviews with multiple stakeholders including transporters, personnel of manufacturing organizations with transportation requirements and key employees of the RoaDo platform. They leveraged reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) to identify patterns in stakeholder experiences with digital B2B platforms in logistics management guided by the value architecture framework of digital platforms.
The findings of the study reveal that digital B2B platforms enhance logistics management through three core utilities: discovery, matching and transaction. Each of these three core utilities enable stakeholders to create, deliver and capture value across the logistics management process.
The study contributes to the logistics management literature by providing a comprehensive understanding of how digital B2B platforms add value across all the activities of logistics management, and to all the stakeholders involved in the process. The study also offers a process perspective of how digital platform architecture transforms organizations and their ecosystems.
The study's findings offer valuable insights for the logistics industry, showcasing how they can leverage digital B2B platforms to enhance logistics management, improve efficiency, and gain a competitive advantage. It also provides a blueprint for adopting digital platforms, helping manufacturers and distributors overcome logistical challenges such as sourcing logistics partners, tracking shipments, and managing post-delivery processes, resulting in better turnaround times and improved transparency.
Authors’ Names: Rashi Agarwala, Krishna Satyanarayana, R Srinivasan, Deepak Chandrashekar
Journal Name: Technovation (IIMB B2)
URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166497224002189?via%3Dihub
