India plans to conduct DPI in 50 countries in next 5 years: Nilekani

Nandan Nilekani also said that Indian DPI systems have been deployed in 15 countries across the world so far

Nilekani also reiterated that the value of startups and companies using Indian DPI exceeds $100 billion

According to Inc42 data, Indian startups raised over $150 million in funding between 2014 and H1 2024, and the country is currently home to 118 unicorns.

Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys and architect of Aadhaar, said India plans to expand its digital public infrastructure (DPI) to 50 countries in the next five years, sources said.

As reported by Economic Times, Nilekani, shedding light on the global implementation of India’s DPI, said that the infrastructure is currently being used in 15 countries across the world.

“This (DPI) can be implemented anywhere… There is a project to take it to 50 countries in five years. We are currently in at least 15 countries. Not the entire stack because it is a bit complicated, but many parts of it are being implemented,” Nilekani said at an event in Bengaluru.

When asked whether such DPIs would require “government support” to be successful, Nilekani replied that some of them do indeed require regulatory support.

“The ID (Aadhaar) was government-backed. They spent about $1 per person and gave 1.3 billion people IDs. But UPI came from NPCI, a non-profit owned by banks. It became valuable to the government because of demonetisation, which gave a boost to digital payments, and Covid-19 forced people to make payments while maintaining social distancing. The government needs to define the rules of the game,” Nilekani added.

Talking about the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Nilekani said the digital payments infrastructure has been built on the philosophy of “public rail and private innovation”, adding that UPI today recorded 14.4 billion transactions per month with 500 million users and 50 million merchants.

He further reiterated that startups using India’s DPI are valued at over $100 billion. “We estimate that over $100 billion of companies have been built on this infrastructure that are using this technology,” Nilekani added.

Underpinning all this is India’s burgeoning startup ecosystem, which raised over $150 billion in funding between 2014 and H1 2024. India is also home to over 118 unicorns and 112 soon-to-be cornis that have raised billions of dollars and achieved revenues in the hundreds of crores of rupees.

The growth of Indian startups is largely attributed to the growing number of internet users in India, rising smartphone penetration and affordable internet tariffs. Additionally, state-backed platforms like UPI, ONDC and account aggregator framework have created multiple use cases and given rise to giants in the fintech ecosystem.