IIM Bangalore and Protean release the inaugural ‘State of DPI in India’ report
First annual evidence-led review maps India’s DPI trajectory across mature and emerging sectors; highlights progress, gaps, and priorities for the next phase of evolution
4 December, 2025, Bengaluru: 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, earlier today at IIMB. The report marks the beginning of an annual effort to systematically document and analyse the evolution of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) across key sectors in India.
The ’State of DPI in India’ 2025 report, co-authored by Prof. R Srinivasan, Chairperson, CDPG; Chaitrali Bhoi, Research Associate, CDPG; Anuradha Sharma, IIMB PhD programme scholar; Nayanika Chakraborty, Researcher, CDPG; and Dr. Vikas N. Prabhu, IIMB PhD programme alumnus, is now available on the CDPG website.
The release of the report brought together a broad spectrum of stakeholders, including government bodies, think-tanks, and domain experts, to advance national discourse on DPI. The report was unveiled by Mr. Harpreet Singh Anand, CHRO, Protean, alongside Prof. R Srinivasan, Chairperson, CDPG; Prof. S Sadagopan, Former Director, IIITB; Prof. Rishikesha T Krishnan, Professor In-charge, New Campus and faculty of Strategy; and Prof. M Jayadev, Dean of Administration and faculty of Finance & Accounting.
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.
Welcome address
During the welcome address, Prof. R Srinivasan discussed his leadership of the initiative, which consists of research contributions by IIMB doctoral programme scholars and alumni. “In studying India’s Digital Public Infrastructure, what becomes clear is that we are witnessing a structural transformation in how a nation organizes its social and economic systems. DPI has moved beyond being a collection of digital utilities — it has evolved into a unifying architecture that enables citizens, institutions and markets to interact with unprecedented ease and trust. Through this report, we highlight how the same foundational rails that support identity and payments are now reshaping the financial and healthcare landscapes. Our intention is to offer an informed and authoritative perspective that helps the country appreciate the magnitude of what has been built, and to stimulate deeper thinking on how India can continue to lead the world in designing digital systems that are equitable, reliable and future-ready”, he said. He added that the Center undertook a rigorous process of stakeholder interviews, data collection from diverse sources such as donor agencies, funding agencies, hospitals, founders, regulators, and industry leaders, along with an analytical synthesis to arrive at the insights presented in this report.
Mr. Suresh Sethi, MD and CEO, Protean eGov Technologies, who attended the session virtually, said, “India’s DPI journey has shown the world that digital systems can be both population-scale and deeply humane. This study with IIM Bangalore captures that story — of how identity, payments, data, and now health and financial services are being woven into a single digital public fabric. As we enter our 30th year at Protean, we see DPI not as technology, but as a quiet force of dignity, equity and opportunity. With open architectures and AI-driven intelligence, India is building a future where every citizen can access essential services seamlessly, securely and without privilege”.
An expanding DPI frontier
“We can do it at scale, and we can do it for the world”, said Prof. S Sadagopan, Former Director, IIITB, as he dwelt on the evolution of the DPI landscape. He contrasted the skepticism around burgeoning digital innovations in the 1970s with the groundbreaking successes of later decades, citing the establishment of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and Bengaluru's role as a tech hub, noting that "Every second bank account of the world runs on a software that comes from Namma-Bengaluru”. Prof. Sadagopan celebrated the development of innovations like UPI, Aadhaar, MOSIP, and the NPCI, lamenting that India has historically under-documented these achievements. He concluded, urging that this pioneering research initiative become an ongoing undertaking and a "standard citation for the conversations pertaining to DPI for years to come”.
Prof. Rishikesha T. Krishnan provided context regarding the establishment of the Centre for Digital Public Goods (CDPG), calling it “an important milestone for IIMB as a centre of strong contemporary relevance”. He explained that DPI was a clear area where the Institute could make a difference, as it effectively merges management thinking with policy guidance and regulation – a scope that extends well beyond the foundations of traditional management education. "We want to take stock and chart the journey forward," he added, noting that this report is a crucial first step in documenting that path.
On the collaborative spirit guiding the partnership between Protean and the Institute, Mr. Harpreet Singh Anand, CHRO, noted that "We are building for the future”. He highlighted the symbolic timing of the launch, which coincides with Protean’s 30-year journey of developing population-scale digital systems that seamlessly power everyday life in India. He reflected on the core purpose of DPI, which is to help citizens, aid processes, and touch a heart, without the prodding need to prove one’s identity. He affirmed Protean’s commitment to celebrating this mission and taking the work to the next level, specifically through the investments in the insurance stack, agri stack, and health stack.
Key findings: Scale, Uneven Progress, and Strengthening Governance
At the launch event, Dr. Vikas N. Prabhu, alumnus of the PhD programme at IIMB and member of the CDPG Research Team, presented a walkthrough of the methodology deployed, core insights to be gleaned, and policy recommendations that the assessment offered. The report, he stated, 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 ecosystem, insurance, non-clinical and technical services, and veterinary medicine to assess the breadth of emerging DPI impact.
The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) stands out, he pointed, driving nearly 49% of all global real-time payments and processing approximately ₹200 lakh crore in FY24. The data-sharing ecosystem is also expanding rapidly, with Account Aggregators crossing 2.2 billion consents and over 112 million users linking their accounts. In public service delivery, Aadhaar-supported Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT) now facilitate payments for 328 schemes across 56 ministries, enhancing efficiency and transparency. The healthcare sector's DPI is broadening its reach through the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), which is building national registries, and the eSanjeevani platform, which continues to scale teleconsultations at an accelerating pace. Furthermore, new-generation DPIs like the Unified Logistics Interface Platform (ULIP), Beckn, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), and Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN) are poised to reshape logistics, e-commerce, and access to credit, fostering new avenues for innovation and inclusion.
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.
In financial services, the DPI stack has moved decisively into a “leverage phase” built atop a Payments, Identity and Consent framework. Aadhaar-enabled eKYC, UPI, and consent-based data sharing through the Account Aggregator framework and Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA) have collectively enabled new credit flows, real-time payments, and innovation across consumers and MSMEs. Aadhaar and UPI, in particular, have driven significant gains in financial inclusion by reducing transaction frictions and catalysing private-sector solutions.
Progress, however, varies across domains. In healthcare, rapid but early-stage growth is visible through the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, which has issued tens of crores of ABHA IDs, linked a growing volume of health records, and verified professionals and facilities. Yet the sector remains in an implementation phase requiring stronger provider adoption, deeper system integration, and clearer incentives to enable continuity of care at scale.
Data governance and privacy: A complementary architecture
Additionally, the report highlights the interlinked roles of Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA) and the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, with DEPA offering the operational framework for user-controlled data sharing, and the DPDP Act anchoring a statutory, rights-based privacy regime. Together, they provide a pathway to safe, consented data portability that can unlock new value across finance, health, and other emerging DPI layers.
Several other sectors are moving towards meaningful DPI adoption. The report identifies three where the impact is increasingly visible – digital commerce, education, and logistics – each demonstrating early evidence of scale, interoperability, and ecosystem alignment.
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.
Finally, 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.
Critical reflections
The Q&A session at the launch event surfaced several reflections on the governance and evolution of India’s DPI ecosystem. Responding to questions on privacy, Prof. Srinivasan, lead author on the report, underlined that India’s DPIs are architected around user consent, with clear differentiation between personal and non-personal data and built-in mechanisms to revoke consent. The emerging ecosystem of consent managers, envisioned as user agents across DPI layers, was highlighted as a leading model benchmarked against global standards, though Prof. Srinivasan added, the need for sustained public education and awareness on exercising consent rights was fundamental.
The conversation also touched on concerns around Aadhaar-based digital public technologies and the persistence of exclusion errors. While the report does not focus exclusively on exclusion, Prof. Srinivasan noted that challenges often originate at the point of data collection, where strengthening processes remains essential.
Finally, questions around preventing predatory private-sector practices and over-corporatisation prompted a clarification of India’s DPI design, where “core infrastructure is built as a public layer with clear regulatory guardrails, while innovation and customer responsiveness flourish in the private domain”. This unbundling of infrastructure and goods, along with strong regulatory oversight, was positioned as key to mitigating misuse by bad actors and ensuring a balanced, competitive ecosystem.
Please click here for photo gallery
IIM Bangalore and Protean release the inaugural ‘State of DPI in India’ report
First annual evidence-led review maps India’s DPI trajectory across mature and emerging sectors; highlights progress, gaps, and priorities for the next phase of evolution
4 December, 2025, Bengaluru: 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, earlier today at IIMB. The report marks the beginning of an annual effort to systematically document and analyse the evolution of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) across key sectors in India.
The ’State of DPI in India’ 2025 report, co-authored by Prof. R Srinivasan, Chairperson, CDPG; Chaitrali Bhoi, Research Associate, CDPG; Anuradha Sharma, IIMB PhD programme scholar; Nayanika Chakraborty, Researcher, CDPG; and Dr. Vikas N. Prabhu, IIMB PhD programme alumnus, is now available on the CDPG website.
The release of the report brought together a broad spectrum of stakeholders, including government bodies, think-tanks, and domain experts, to advance national discourse on DPI. The report was unveiled by Mr. Harpreet Singh Anand, CHRO, Protean, alongside Prof. R Srinivasan, Chairperson, CDPG; Prof. S Sadagopan, Former Director, IIITB; Prof. Rishikesha T Krishnan, Professor In-charge, New Campus and faculty of Strategy; and Prof. M Jayadev, Dean of Administration and faculty of Finance & Accounting.
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.
Welcome address
During the welcome address, Prof. R Srinivasan discussed his leadership of the initiative, which consists of research contributions by IIMB doctoral programme scholars and alumni. “In studying India’s Digital Public Infrastructure, what becomes clear is that we are witnessing a structural transformation in how a nation organizes its social and economic systems. DPI has moved beyond being a collection of digital utilities — it has evolved into a unifying architecture that enables citizens, institutions and markets to interact with unprecedented ease and trust. Through this report, we highlight how the same foundational rails that support identity and payments are now reshaping the financial and healthcare landscapes. Our intention is to offer an informed and authoritative perspective that helps the country appreciate the magnitude of what has been built, and to stimulate deeper thinking on how India can continue to lead the world in designing digital systems that are equitable, reliable and future-ready”, he said. He added that the Center undertook a rigorous process of stakeholder interviews, data collection from diverse sources such as donor agencies, funding agencies, hospitals, founders, regulators, and industry leaders, along with an analytical synthesis to arrive at the insights presented in this report.
Mr. Suresh Sethi, MD and CEO, Protean eGov Technologies, who attended the session virtually, said, “India’s DPI journey has shown the world that digital systems can be both population-scale and deeply humane. This study with IIM Bangalore captures that story — of how identity, payments, data, and now health and financial services are being woven into a single digital public fabric. As we enter our 30th year at Protean, we see DPI not as technology, but as a quiet force of dignity, equity and opportunity. With open architectures and AI-driven intelligence, India is building a future where every citizen can access essential services seamlessly, securely and without privilege”.
An expanding DPI frontier
“We can do it at scale, and we can do it for the world”, said Prof. S Sadagopan, Former Director, IIITB, as he dwelt on the evolution of the DPI landscape. He contrasted the skepticism around burgeoning digital innovations in the 1970s with the groundbreaking successes of later decades, citing the establishment of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and Bengaluru's role as a tech hub, noting that "Every second bank account of the world runs on a software that comes from Namma-Bengaluru”. Prof. Sadagopan celebrated the development of innovations like UPI, Aadhaar, MOSIP, and the NPCI, lamenting that India has historically under-documented these achievements. He concluded, urging that this pioneering research initiative become an ongoing undertaking and a "standard citation for the conversations pertaining to DPI for years to come”.
Prof. Rishikesha T. Krishnan provided context regarding the establishment of the Centre for Digital Public Goods (CDPG), calling it “an important milestone for IIMB as a centre of strong contemporary relevance”. He explained that DPI was a clear area where the Institute could make a difference, as it effectively merges management thinking with policy guidance and regulation – a scope that extends well beyond the foundations of traditional management education. "We want to take stock and chart the journey forward," he added, noting that this report is a crucial first step in documenting that path.
On the collaborative spirit guiding the partnership between Protean and the Institute, Mr. Harpreet Singh Anand, CHRO, noted that "We are building for the future”. He highlighted the symbolic timing of the launch, which coincides with Protean’s 30-year journey of developing population-scale digital systems that seamlessly power everyday life in India. He reflected on the core purpose of DPI, which is to help citizens, aid processes, and touch a heart, without the prodding need to prove one’s identity. He affirmed Protean’s commitment to celebrating this mission and taking the work to the next level, specifically through the investments in the insurance stack, agri stack, and health stack.
Key findings: Scale, Uneven Progress, and Strengthening Governance
At the launch event, Dr. Vikas N. Prabhu, alumnus of the PhD programme at IIMB and member of the CDPG Research Team, presented a walkthrough of the methodology deployed, core insights to be gleaned, and policy recommendations that the assessment offered. The report, he stated, 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 ecosystem, insurance, non-clinical and technical services, and veterinary medicine to assess the breadth of emerging DPI impact.
The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) stands out, he pointed, driving nearly 49% of all global real-time payments and processing approximately ₹200 lakh crore in FY24. The data-sharing ecosystem is also expanding rapidly, with Account Aggregators crossing 2.2 billion consents and over 112 million users linking their accounts. In public service delivery, Aadhaar-supported Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT) now facilitate payments for 328 schemes across 56 ministries, enhancing efficiency and transparency. The healthcare sector's DPI is broadening its reach through the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), which is building national registries, and the eSanjeevani platform, which continues to scale teleconsultations at an accelerating pace. Furthermore, new-generation DPIs like the Unified Logistics Interface Platform (ULIP), Beckn, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), and Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN) are poised to reshape logistics, e-commerce, and access to credit, fostering new avenues for innovation and inclusion.
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.
In financial services, the DPI stack has moved decisively into a “leverage phase” built atop a Payments, Identity and Consent framework. Aadhaar-enabled eKYC, UPI, and consent-based data sharing through the Account Aggregator framework and Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA) have collectively enabled new credit flows, real-time payments, and innovation across consumers and MSMEs. Aadhaar and UPI, in particular, have driven significant gains in financial inclusion by reducing transaction frictions and catalysing private-sector solutions.
Progress, however, varies across domains. In healthcare, rapid but early-stage growth is visible through the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, which has issued tens of crores of ABHA IDs, linked a growing volume of health records, and verified professionals and facilities. Yet the sector remains in an implementation phase requiring stronger provider adoption, deeper system integration, and clearer incentives to enable continuity of care at scale.
Data governance and privacy: A complementary architecture
Additionally, the report highlights the interlinked roles of Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA) and the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, with DEPA offering the operational framework for user-controlled data sharing, and the DPDP Act anchoring a statutory, rights-based privacy regime. Together, they provide a pathway to safe, consented data portability that can unlock new value across finance, health, and other emerging DPI layers.
Several other sectors are moving towards meaningful DPI adoption. The report identifies three where the impact is increasingly visible – digital commerce, education, and logistics – each demonstrating early evidence of scale, interoperability, and ecosystem alignment.
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.
Finally, 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.
Critical reflections
The Q&A session at the launch event surfaced several reflections on the governance and evolution of India’s DPI ecosystem. Responding to questions on privacy, Prof. Srinivasan, lead author on the report, underlined that India’s DPIs are architected around user consent, with clear differentiation between personal and non-personal data and built-in mechanisms to revoke consent. The emerging ecosystem of consent managers, envisioned as user agents across DPI layers, was highlighted as a leading model benchmarked against global standards, though Prof. Srinivasan added, the need for sustained public education and awareness on exercising consent rights was fundamental.
The conversation also touched on concerns around Aadhaar-based digital public technologies and the persistence of exclusion errors. While the report does not focus exclusively on exclusion, Prof. Srinivasan noted that challenges often originate at the point of data collection, where strengthening processes remains essential.
Finally, questions around preventing predatory private-sector practices and over-corporatisation prompted a clarification of India’s DPI design, where “core infrastructure is built as a public layer with clear regulatory guardrails, while innovation and customer responsiveness flourish in the private domain”. This unbundling of infrastructure and goods, along with strong regulatory oversight, was positioned as key to mitigating misuse by bad actors and ensuring a balanced, competitive ecosystem.
Please click here for photo gallery