Here’s an example of India leading the world in tech infrastructure

Photo credit: Santabanta.

India has the world’s largest digital identity infrastructure. It’s called Aadhar, and has more than 1 billion users. That makes it one of the largest platforms in the world, alongside Facebook, Android, and MS Office which have billion plus users. Aadhar is the only one among them which was created by a government.

This Aadhar infrastructure, apart from providing its citizens a unique identification number, becomes an enabler of tech innovation. One example of this, eSignDesk – an electronic signature product – was launched by legal documentation startup LegalDesk today in Bangalore. Documents signed with eSignDesk are legally valid in any court of law.

Fittingly, it was Nandan Nilekani, former chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) – the creator of Aadhar – who launched the product. Nandan is also the co-founder of Indian IT behemoth Infosys. To a question from Tech in Asia, Nandan pointed out that eSignDesk only requires Aadhar and a smartphone for a legally valid document.

Any startup can now use the mobile phone as one factor and Aadhar as the second factor and create something better than Apple Pay in their garage.

Nandan also added that it’s only the government that can provide digital infrastructure on the scale of something like Aadhar. But once it is in place, this can unleash innovation because startups like LegalDesk and others can use it to create new products and services.

It’s keeping this in mind that Aadhar was architected six years ago in a massively scalable manner. Today, it is supporting 100 million identity-related transactions a day in real time. Nandan says that in a few years’ time, it will be supporting 1 billion transactions a day simply with the addition of more servers as Aadhar usage grows.

Coming up: a paperless, cashless society

Photo credit: Patrick Savalle.

Aadhar is just one piece of the puzzle that the Indian government, central bank, and tech community are solving. Another is the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) being rolled out currently.

“Aadhar for authentication and UPI for mobile payments form a powerful combination for reimagining an array of government and business processes,” Nandan said. It will transform productivity, reduce costs, expand markets, and bring more inclusion in society.

Nandan Nilekani, former chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, with co-founders of LegalDesk.

“We made it possible to get legal work done online at LegalDesk, but what we couldn’t do was to replace the need for wet sign,” said Krupesh Bhat, founder of LegalDesk. “Now with the advent of Aadhar-based digital signature, I am glad to say that today it is possible.”