Digital India: Aadhaar Card, DigiLocker, China, Hacking & Business Opportunity - Suresh Sethi | FO400 Raj Shamani

0:28ڈڈڈی آترا سیفتا ہے؟ A digital identity sharing is much easier. That is, I think, the big thing which Adhar brought. Chinese hackers attacked India's data. Now, what have they done?

0:42Which sectors are there? Which areas are you thinking that they should now be online? You should take ONDC. So, you've done worked in India, Africa, US. What are the challenges in Africa versus India? One shoe doesn't fit all. So what India has created, if you look at the adhaar, the adhaar is serving 140 crore people today. Brazil might be looking at digital commerce, some countries, Rwanda might be looking at identity. So each country will have a different problem to solve. Adhaar card is what happens after death.

1:18Today everything is digital. From your identity card to bank account. But what is the backbone of digital infrastructure? What is the backbone behind our data? And what is our data in these digital platforms truly safe? Now, there is access to people. But there is no clarity that the documents are secure in DigiLocker. How can the misuse be used in Adhar card? DigiYatra through, you can track them? These questions will be answered by our guest Suresh Sethi, Managing Director and CEO of Protean, EGov Technologies, which is a company that works on the major digital infrastructure foundation. Like Adhar.

1:56This episode is shared with your whole family because about data privacy and digital identity is very important for everyone. And about proteins, visit their website mentioned in the description below.

2:16tell me India post in 1900s and India post today 2025 what are the differences I think some things probably remain the same like you know the people working within the institution we have seen people who are multi-generational still doing the postman's job because urban frankly and I mean you would realize the same we both live in Bombay I hardly see a postman right because we live in flats unless there's a speed post so he will come up the door will come up the bottom goes down but the moment you get into an equal system like this as I was saying villages you met people so the trust that they have in the villages is phenomenal he's absolutely the son of the soil so if you go to a village then he also heard those stories you know we had a whole campaign on that slogan but you know he used to read write letters for the families stuff like that which means he was a very trusted guy because if he can't write his own house the lady is dictating to him and he's writing and then posting it or he's reading a letter which has come in.

3:39Wow. So that sort of trust was always there. But today, if I look at you know your WhatsApp, everything, all this is available, right? And mobile phone penetration has reached everywhere. So, the letters are few people today. But post office, that trust remains. So that is something which remains. Interesting. I've also heard a lot of stories about India Post's entire ecosystem. That's technically a backbone for a lot of delivery solutions in the country and around the world, I think it's one of the biggest. What is that system? Is it true, first of all? So I think when I look at from a people perspective, yes, you know, the length, breadth, the fact that it has been so carefully nurtured, built over a number of years.

4:27This is a very nice example when we talk about, say, digital public infrastructure. This is a physical infrastructure. and in a way built by the government not with a profit motive so when we talk about DPI we say that India has taken a very very you know balanced position if I look at the US lot of your digital infrastructure is owned by corporates yes and if you take another extreme you look at somebody like say China it is owned by the government so India took a very sort of fine balance between the two So, as much as the DPI created, the government has built the rails on which you are building then your applications for me and you to consume services.

5:15Very technical explanation. But if I look at India Post, the entire physical infrastructure of India Post has established the government. Because it's government salaries, Grameen, Dark Saver, everything. It is run by the government. So, there's no profit motive. They've even invested in places to say last mile reach. the same example that last village in kunoor which has five people living there you put a post office over there if you were a profit seeking entity you would have you would never do i don't need to do it over here right so that is a physical infrastructure so that is i think the first strength of that ecosystem you have put people out there then comes the point of what we talked today you know giving them the right technology enablers to connect it that is where it becomes a backbone because jab tak wo agar wo log nahi hongay pahli baat you couldn't have done it yeah because you had the people because whatever i mean today johom corporate world mein bhi baat kerti hai inki bhi toh actually in a way training hui hai na hum baat kertai te jab hum ne ipv set up kiya tha india post payment bank we almost did one crore man hours of training one crore it's very easy because there are 3 ,000 ,000 if you do 10 hours multiply easily you reach the number looks huge but looking at the scale of the people we invested time we gave them devices we trained them on devices one thing we were told up front was to say whether 26 years I was very comfortable with a smartphone or it is a 70 year old postman they should be able to open the account in the same amount of time that was like the benchmark for us and we were able to actually create that interfaces on our devices to say don't know equal time do you think because you spoke about China, US, India public infrastructure, private infrastructure do you feel that in India which is public and private partnership like this if fully privatize then the function will be fast So Raj it comes to the same point.

7:26It's not about the speed. You know fast because ultimately digital public infrastructure is meant for equitable access. We use the standard term right affordability accessibility and availability in a country like ours. You want to reach every corner of the country. We talk about digital divide. If you have a smartphone or not, the moment you create technology it has to have equitable access to everybody. So infrastructure, a minus a digital infrastructure also has the same connotation. That you are building it like rails on which everybody can have access to. And secondly, it has to be very affordable.

8:10Now if I make a highway and say that I will put the toll charge that somebody who is driving a Rolls Royce can only get on top, but we are also catering to the cyclists and the bullock cart, So, you have made your national highway roads. The government has made a toll. It's like something which is affordable to everybody. And availability is again saying that infrastructure and resilience. COVID example again, 24 by 7, the things were running. So, if you look at these things, whoever is going to invest at the infrastructure level will have to have these as the primary factors and not profit as the primary factor.

8:45Right? Interesting. so you feel that this government is also not but how is it in US in US is it private US is largely private but today I think still if we take examples a great example today is Digiyatra right Digiyatra ecosystem is running on Adhar and you know all that stuff because ultimately what are you doing you are using verifiable credentials your boarding pass you are converting to a credential and you are converting aapni identity ke saath link kar rahe ho abh yaan pe you can do it anywhere because adhaar is a national asset jo bhi application hai aapki jhaan par bhi hai and each one of us who have an adhaar or any id including a pan can today link it and each of your boarding passes becomes verifiable and you are walking into the airports US may I do understand somebody did it but it was done for five airports because that company had a network over there so I think that is where the difference comes today you have built a digital public infrastructure be it on the identity front right identity is one of the core dpi's so adhar today is all pervasive because we say that 100 penetration or 99.9 percent anybody who has an adhar can today use the digi yatra app and walk into an airport it's a simple example same fast tag leliji different uh you know ecosystems which are there they are all running on dpis upis payments yeah data led dpis which is your account aggregator and all but it is because the dpi is there private sector then you will enable the impact where you have ecosystem enabled but it won't be national and it won't be equally available to everybody and the entire idea was that that every post office can become a bank's end point.

10:40And more importantly, every bank has a smartphone and biometric device that can open a bank account and can do any transaction. So that bank became a mobile banking, you know, doorstep banking person who could go to any village, could go to any house. And I said, the nearest bank then became your nearest bank point. So, that bank point reached your home. So, using post office, the government of India was able to create last mile banking reaching every person and every village in the country. And this dhakya was not only equipped to provide banking facilities. India Post Payment Bank, under the payment bank guidelines, had the ability to provide third-party products like insurance, like pension.

11:30and therefore it became a full-scale provider of financial services who could come to your house and help you to transact. So, India for that became a big, big movement where a large physical infrastructure was converted into a digital public infrastructure so that we could take financial services right to the grassroots. Tell me, what does Protein do exactly? And what is the future for Protein? Protein started in 1995. Protean was set up as a market infrastructure institution. And it was primarily formed as the first central securities depository to transform the capital markets. And at that time, challenge was that because in capital markets, a lot of the processes were paper-based.

12:19So your settlement, your exchange of money, everything was a paper-based process. And for a single day, we spent 10-14 days in settlement. So Protean was created to create a complete digitization of this ecosystem. And before 7-8 years, Protean focused on the entire capital markets reforms and the capital market system creation, including ecosystem adoption. And those are the three Protean got a unique opportunity to diversify. At that time, we were known as NSDL, National Securities Depository Limited. And in 2003, there was a committee set up by the government to look into tax modernization.

13:05And this committee was set up under the chairmanship of Dr. Vijay Kelkar. So in Dr. Kelkar report, they nominated Protein that they should look at modernization of the tax ecosystem. What were the key moments in Protein's initial days that became a turning point for you? Challenges were very similar to capital markets. a lot of paperwork, large companies' rights alliance would almost need a truck to be able to file their returns. So the challenge between taxes assessed, taxes collected, and taxes deposited was a huge challenge. Reconciliation, transparency, these were the big issues which were there at that point of time.

13:48So Protein again stepped up to create the complete digitization of the tax information network. And under that tax modernization, we were able to do the reconciliation, we were able to bring the visibility in terms of the tax collected. And there was a disproportionate amount of tax collected due to this efficiency and transparency coming into place in the country. From there on, it was very much, you know, looking at multiple e-governance services, citizen-centric services. So Protean started working on creating national level platforms. After tax, our next big foray was in the space of pension.

14:31At that time, PFRDA, which is the pension regulator, was looking at creating a central record keeping agency, which would create the technology backbone for the pension ecosystem. Pension ecosystem today consists of almost 14 type of entities, be it banks, be it pension fund managers be it annuity service providers the points of presence johan peh pensioner ja ke apply karta hai account ke liye to in sub entities ko ek hi system pe leke aana aur ek pension subscriber ke liye right from account opening to contributions to withdrawals to settlements wo poora journey ek tarikay se ek hi system pe leke aana uska platform that is what we built at that point of time so that was again a huge transformation in the pension ecosystem.

15:19So largely, if I may, if I summarize it, so Protein started as a large organization creating national level platforms. Today, we call them as digital public infrastructure. We went on to providing solutions, powering digital identity. This was the onset of Aadhaar, various services like eSign, EKYC, eAuthentication, PANK data, PASP online, PAN validation. We went on to now power enterprise digitization through various solutions which are built on top of the foundational DPIs and then powering open digital ecosystems which are in multiple fields. So while we started largely with the BFSI sector, today Protein works in agri sector, health, education and skilling, digital commerce on the back of ONDC.

16:09So we have multiple areas we are contributing to the digital economy today.

16:17So, today we have more transactions from 14 ,000 to 14 ,000 every single minute but we are still behind the scenes. One of the biggest crisis which happened if you remember COVID times. now covid کے دوران sab kuch bend ہو گیا تھا here to be people from the house and they didn't go and they didn't go and they didn't go and they didn't go and they didn't go and the government decided that people can account you can and they didn't go so that the daily earning or daily wages bend will go because they can do it and they can do it do it and they can do it and they can do it and if you see

17:07So this technology, this digital infrastructure stood the test of time in the severest of crisis during COVID. Well, everything was shut down. The physical infrastructure came to a halt. But the digital systems kept on going. whether it was people opening accounts or withdrawing money or doing their daily business of paying for goods and services to be delivered to them the digital infrastructure stood the test of time. So in 2021 as Protein was diversifying into multiple areas while we started our journey as a depository we went on to do taxation, pension, working with almost seven ministries covering 19 national level projects as we saw 2021 it was also a point of inflection india was moving towards creating multiple open digital ecosystems protean as a company went far beyond the bfsi sector we started doing digital commerce we were looking at work in the space of agriculture health education skilling so we were diversifying as an organization and a thought came to say why don't we look at a name change because branding is very important nsdl are our core you know brand name always stood for trust for security it was equally the need of the hour to say that how do you you know while you retain your identification with trust and security it is equally important you bring in agility you bring in adaptability because technology is changing day in and day out so as the company started moving into multiple sectors into showing new technology adoption we decided to change the name and what better than calling it Protein.

18:55Protein as you know is the Greek god of adaptability stands for agility stands for you know forward-looking thinking and we therefore changed the name of the company from NSTL to Protein. Digital India when did it make a difference When did you think that this is actually big? This is actually changing lives? If you will see, the most important thing was dematerialization. The moment you were able to remove paper out of the way, your ability to scale and create, do a large number of transactions became possible. So, if we look at capital markets and its growth, a lot of it was due to the fact that we could dematerialize, bring real-time online settlements in place.

19:38and us may be created the first asset tokenization way back in 1996 when we dematerialized the physical securities but us ke saath a interesting chise thii kyunki jub tuk aap ke hat mein aapka share certificate nahi hota hai aap agar 1995 ke baare mein souchae to loogon ko yeh tha agar mein ye share certificate dhe dung ga So where is exactly the ownership? Right? Everything is digital. And we had interesting examples. There was a shareholder who was holding the shares of Tata share. And he refused to give his physical share certificate. Saying his share certificate is the right signature on Mr.

20:23JRD Tata. So I don't want to give it. You have to digitize it. But I want to keep hold of my securities. So there were interesting anecdotes as we, you know, revamped or reimagined the system and these were some of them which happened at that point of time i think the most important thing is that whenever you do digitization at the infrastructure level one thing is that our country is so large and complex and digital literacy will be at a different level or stage so you have to make sure everybody is included and part of it so any creation of digital infrastructure inclusion has to be a design principle not an afterthought so one thing was the most important that when we have prepared digital infrastructure for any sector like a pension or a new age digital infrastructure first of all this was thought that every person and every woman how are you giving them accessibility to it right accessibility becomes important تو جن کی اپنی digital خشمتہ نہیں ہے جن کے پاس smartphone نہیں ہے یا جو laptop یا computer پہ کام نہیں کر سکتے ہیں آپ ان کے لیے بھی یہی صویدہ کیسے پرابط کریں گے تو اس کے لیے we made sure کہ either it is a self-service model or it is an assisted service model آج ہم پورے دیش میں چار لاکھ سے زیادہ agents ہیں جو آپ کی مدد کر سکتے ہیں اگر آپ نے pancard کے لیے apply کرنا ہے or pension account and these agents are now in the country and they are regulated or secure services provide and this way we ensure that every level can be digitally or rather digital services can be consumed and this is important is the literacy one is the digital literacy and one is the financial literacy and it is equally important that if you have a physical certificate for example.

22:27Here you have to pay for your money. Today we use UPI. We don't exchange cash. Ultimately, your money is digital. In wallet or account. So it has been a huge experience in enabling the ecosystem. So what we have done is large scale project. Our job is not just this. We have technology ready to do. We have to use the whole ecosystem. How to use it. How to use your money. How to secure your money. How to trust you. How to get your money. and you still have control over it. Those were important things in enabling the ecosystem. So the company has always played the role of a huge ecosystem player while at the same time creating the technology which is inclusive, which caters to the last mile person and ensures everybody is equally having equitable access.

23:17When you see buyer and seller, the goods and services that are digitally provided. most of the sellers today are confined to large dependency on large platforms so those platforms today take the decisions which sellers to get in and they also make sure they have control on the buying side so they control the entire end-to-end experience because now when someone goes digitally to buy you go to a platform and the sellers ko access karte hain wahaan se buy and sell karte hain so ondc became a experiment initially where we are looking at seeing that if you separate the buyer and the seller side taa ki aap a central gateway ya router bana de to use a word which becomes the you know the open network jis mein any buyer or any seller can plug in and they can discover each other to take it very technically but ultimately is ka idea yeh hai ki aaj agar das applications hain jo buy side par hain or similarly das applications sell side pe hain as a buyer when you log into any application you can see all the sellers on the selling side right and if on the selling side you have a chota kirana store ya na small artisan when he comes and he becomes connected to the ondc network then all the buying applications will have ability to see that seller so that seller does not have to create the buying site for himself a successful example if you see this comparison is the upi example today when you send bank a to bank b then they are not bilaterally connected both banks are connected with the upi network and your money moves across from one to the other so what happened was upi became came the central router or the network jis ke saath sabhi banks connect ho gai and you can move transactions to and fro between any bank so agar harik bank ek dúsra ke saath directly engage karta you would have thousands of connections happening which are bilateral in nature ONDC works in a very similar way so by unbundling it what happened with that was that everybody got democratic access to the buyer market and to the seller market

25:47so that was the idea so ONDC was envisaged as a digital public infrastructure the infrastructure layer on which all the buyers and sellers will get registered and you will then provide equitable access to everybody so Protean ka role a little bit about you we have built in 2021 this open protocols with an ecosystem where we are looking at transport and mobility this was in Kochi where the idea was where multi-model transport is because it's a seaside city so the idea was you have buses, you have taxis you have even boats that you take to complete a journey to go from point A to point B the idea was to create an open network which will come to the network in which multimodal transport will come to the network.

26:38And when you want to write books, you will see all of them. You will see boats, buses, taxis. And at the center of it was the open network which was created using Beacon protocols. So these are standard protocols. The moment you plug into it, you are able to connect the rider and the driver. And that is where the journey started. Protean created the first gateway enabling transport and mobility. Along with it, we created the registries where drivers or riders become a registry. And when that model worked successfully at scale in Kochi, around that time, COVID was coming and there were problems in terms of access, remoteness.

27:26The idea came saying, why can't we take the similar concept and apply it to digital commerce?

27:40so that was the fundamental idea behind it since we had created this open network successfully for mobility we were able to bring the same technology and the same protocols to enable digital commerce the government of India established a national advisory council it was led by Sri Nandan Nilkeni and Dr. Aris Sharma and they were a host of other people from the industry including us who were party to that and we then created the entire ONDC network and ONDC limited as a company was established which was then going to look at the entire network become the entity which would facilitate it, govern it also create the network policies and all for the various buyers and sellers So that is how ONDC came into being.

28:30And Protein also became one of the founding contributors to the creation of ONDC Limited. And today we are associated closely with them. We work at the infrastructure level. We are the only company which today provides the entire gateway and registry technology to enable the ONDC ecosystem. And we also create the buyer and seller applications. We are looking at doing the settlement systems. So there's a host of work we are doing in enabling the ONDC network. What is Protein's future vision for Digital India? So the future vision is very much aligned with the Digital India vision and mission. If you look at it, the Indian government has today adopted a very well-balanced framework for creating digital public infrastructure.

29:17I think we are in a very sweet spot where the government today is looking at creating the digital rails, which are almost like creating digital playgrounds in which people can come and collaborate and innovate. And therefore, you have an infrastructure layer. And then on top of it, you are building various technologies, assisted and direct, which serve the citizens and give them the ability to consume services. the government of India a few years ago talked about the fact that we are looking at building almost 17 digital ecosystems you know moving from agriculture to education to skilling to logistics and amongst them the foundational digital public infrastructure blocks remain as identity it remains as payments and it remains as data exchange so in sab ko dekhte ho hai Protein's mission is to contribute in as many DPIs and digital ecosystems as possible.

30:20The other thing, as we rightly said, was what next for us? We want to clearly go beyond India, go and solve for the rest of the world and clearly proudly take India's digital public infrastructure and India's DPI approach to multiple nations where we can solve for them in a manner which befits the stage at which that country is. And some of my earlier mention of DPI in a box, these are some of the things we are trying to work on and bring it out into these countries. Amit, is it safe? Absolutely. What can happen with the track of DGI? What do you think is possible? DGI is a verifiable credential on the basic level.

31:05So what are you doing? like you had COVID certificate, you had a QR code that was given. If anyone can scan the QR code, you have a confirmation that it is a genuine document. That's all. In the case of Digi Yatra, you go to the same principles. If you are an issue or entity, an airline will issue you. right that boarding pass is issued to you as raj now if you have your identity with your identity then boarding pass is verifiable so digi yatra simple work is just linking the two and it's becoming a verifiable credential and because you have a face authentication because your identity is in your face when you go to airport then you see your face and boarding pass and you see both match and you are in without a human intervention.

32:04So that is the simple concept of a verifiable credential. It can be used anywhere. But with that, there will be a lot of data, there will be a lot of information that this passenger is traveling from here, he's staying here. What are the collectors of this? What all is getting collected? Because for bettering it, there will be a lot of data collected. And for making it seamless, for future operations, or making my journey better. So, see at a basic level, technically you don't need any data other than this. But DigiAtra like on the back end, that I'm not sure because we don't provide that service today.

32:43So, what data they are holding, because ultimately, if you can see, DPDP Act is now there. So, DPDP Act is your Digital Protection Act. So, your personal data, is giving you the complete framework that you have data and how you want to use it and consent to talk about it you are sharing your data today with any institution and those institutions you can tell me that I have just given you so that I can give you a loan for example I am giving a simple example but to have the ability to control it and say that you have 2 loan offers in the 10 days in the 11 days then my data should no longer be available with you.

33:29So you are building that sort of ecosystem under the DPDP Act where you are saying that I have full control over my data. In the DG Yatra, you are sharing your data. Ultimately, it's your data and my data. You are going to Delhi. You've gone 10 times in the last five months. You prefer to go by this airline because you know this airline. So there's all data. But you should have the ability to say, can this be used, can this not be used? you give the consent but i'm saying so there are two parts right one is to say on the positive side uh if you say i choose my travel data to be shared now you go to some site and it said that site will know ki raj always likes to travel by business raj likes to travel take a morning flight so i can give you a better curated experience but provided you give me the right to use your data the other thing is you can say I don't want my data to be shared so anybody who wants who can create a value-added service may not be able to provide it the other part clearly is yeah if somebody wants to abuse the data or you look at it negatively to know Raj ki you know what is his behavior which flights does he take and I want to have a visibility so you can take it to any negative extreme right but is it itna possible i don't think itna detail but aggregation to a jata digilocker we keep safe so actually digilocker to bring clarity digilocker no document digilocker is like actually a pointer where document is there where it is issued for example adhar card adhar card is your adhar card has not come into digilocker okay you have actually a pointer from where you are accessing data from the adhar database similarly pan card so it's more like a pointer it's not like there is a today a huge vault created in the country where all sort of documents are sitting in one place they're all residing where they are you are actually using DigiLocker as a conduit you can say from where you are able to access those documents.

35:54Talking about Adhaar, why do you need Adhaar card? We are very worried about our identity is a creation. Every government person or people who provide technologies like you, you talk about it. What happens Adhaar card? So Raj, simple. Let's go to the fundamentals. How do I prove who I am? Passport. How many people have passed? if you look at global numbers not getting into specifics but there is a huge amount of people who don't have an identity as such even if we look at pre-adhaar era we used to talk about the fact that there was only 20-30 % account penetration now account penetration is still an outcome it's not a number to talk about idea is that how many people have success that that I have a loan or I have savings in my bank account that I have not opened because it was it was who you know who you know in the town you go to the country and you a chitthi give the identity so RBI used to run with multiple and what we call OVD officially valid documents to open an account I will use this document and I can identify you so that was all all over the place in paper and everything right and and there is identity and then there's digital identity okay so they are you know that's a big difference because today in a digital ecosystem a digital identity sharing is much easier right and that is that is i think the the big thing which adhar brought about chinese hackers recently adhar data you know about this no I didn't read anything you didn't so it was a while ago that Chinese hackers attacked to get India data

37:50what can they do do you hack what will happen see pure play I don't think there's anything sitting in the database itself other than what we know it's your name it's your birth date it's your whatever but then maybe financial information because but it is not sitting with it is not sitting with Aadhaar. Right Aadhaar database is very pure and simple. There are three four attributes. So it's not much. It's a bank data which is more problem. It is other things which come out of it. What you can what you are today using it to consume services on which is where you was earlier giving the example impersonation.

38:28Impersonation, elections subsidies financial behavioral data. so that's what I was saying it's not pure play Aadhaar as the point it's more about what other data points get linked okay what happens that if Aadhaar card comes to someone and then their death what happens after death Aadhaar card whatever things are active linked all the ID are active yes but end of the day it's the person who's not using it is no longer there so the biometric imprint goes away so So whatever is linked incentives and if someone has a certain death, then you can't misuse kids or relatives or something. But then that's where you get things like Jivan Praman Patra and all.