Tech, Entrepreneurship, Capital, Formalisation— Nilekani Calls Out 4 Big Unlocks For India

Technocrat Nandan Nilekani calls out four key drivers—technology, entrepreneurship, capital, and formalisation—for India to grow at a rate of 8% and become an $8 trillion economy. He also said that UPI for energy will be the next big opportunity, as Indians will buy, sell, and produce energy themselves. 

Nilekani was speaking at VC firm Arkam Ventures’ Annual Meet 2025 in Bengaluru. The big opportunity for India will be to reach the next billion Indians after the previous stack of technology penetrated through one layer of the population. This can be achieved through a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) for spoken language and contextualisation along with growing networks and an increasing number of smartphones, he said.

The chairman of Infosys also said AI should be used for agriculture and with an open agri network, which can apply AI at scale. The open agri network will be rolled out in two states in India soon. AI should be used for education and healthcare, he said. 

Nilekani is also seeing a big opportunity in land monetisation through tokenisation. “Second unlock is tokenisation of land assets. 50% of assets owned by Indians are in the form of land; we should tokenise every piece of land, but it will depend on implementation by the states,” he said.

He also said that by 2035, India will be the most preferred IPO market globally, as we now have more IPOs coming with startups flipping back and listing in India. He also said accelerating the account aggregator (AA) framework and doubling down on the scale will be the next big unlock.

Nilekani said that India will have 1 million startups by 2035, and the sector will grow at an annual rate of 20%. “If a million startups will start solving problems, something exciting will happen,” he said. The next big unlock for the sector is to accelerate startups outside metro cities that can solve problems in smaller cities. 

The tech honcho also said that formalisation of the workforce will be the next big unlock for the economy. As half of India’s workforce will be AI native and more women will enter the workforce, formalisation will accelerate. He also spoke about the need for formalisation of MSMEs and the need to give them access to capital. In the next 10 years, 10 million of 60 million MSMEs will be modern entrepreneurs

Nilekani said that the next UPI is energy, as we buy energy in small amounts. With digital energy grids and solar energy, every home will be a buyer, seller, and producer of energy. “People will buy and sell energy like UPI. Energy will be a huge thing and create a new set of entrepreneurs,” he said.

There is also a need to have digital public infrastructure for work credentials and work benefits.  The architect of Aadhaar also emphasised the need to dramatically simplify laws. “In a world with a million entrepreneurs, laws with colonial and socialist approaches won't work,” he said.