Nandan Nilekani: Startups Using India's Digital Infrastructure Valued at $100 Billion

Infosys co-founder and chairman Nandan Nilekani on Wednesday said startups powered by India's digital public infrastructure are valued at $100 billion. Speaking at the annual Global Fintech Fest here, Nilekani said the very idea while building an Aadhar or unified payments interface was to build the rails that could be used by the private sector or entrepreneurs to come out with innovative offerings.

"The estimate is that the market value of startups on top of India's DPI is about $100 billion," he added.

He also said the future of finance will be a concept he and some people call 'Finternet'.

According to Nilekani -- the architect of the Aadhar project, who also played a pivotal role in the development of the UPI -- Finternet will be user-centric, and unified, which means it will cover all types of assets and will have a universal infrastructure.

Financial systems are unable to handle the demand from users as they want more choice and more control, he said.

All the assets, including land, property, bonds, financial investment, art, paintings etc will be brought under a single infrastructure and tokenised, he said.

"It allows everybody to participate and controls all assets. We want to have something which allows everyone to participate and control all kinds of assets. User-controlled assets, user content, NFTs (non-fungible tokens), adjusted assets which are certified by somebody, registered assets like land, or regulated assets like financial products," he said.

Nilekani said he has written a paper on FINTERNET' with Pramod Varma, Siddharth Shetty and Agustin Carstens and the team at BIS (Bank for International Settlements) in April 2024.