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OCEN July 2025 Snapshot

MSME Lenders need to start looking beyond AUM to truly value short-term loan pools. OCEN helps minimize loan processing costs and provide easy access to new borrower segments at scale. Specialized roles, including collections partners, help reduce the burden on lenders. Short-term lending products for marketplaces where Loan Agents also control the income-source for the borrower can use escrow-based-repayments to mitigate the collections risk. New datasets enable lenders to make easier underwriting decisions for cash-flow based lending.

Both TReDS and OCEN play critical roles in improving MSME access to credit, albeit for different segments of the market. Unlike TReDS, OCEN eliminates the buyer acceptance bottleneck. Instead, it leverages alternative underwriting models, specialized loan products, and digital collections to offer small‑ticket, short‑tenure working capital loans to MSMEs.

While TReDS will likely continue growing in disbursal volumes and strengthen formal receivables financing, OCEN’s focus on smaller, flexible loans positions it to grow much faster in terms of number of loans disbursed. Though TReDS and OCEN are targeting the same goal, both have its own unique features to succeed and co-exist to meet the common goal faster. OCEN becomes the next choice to solve for smaller businesses with small ticket loan requirements who are beyond the formal credit net and do not fit in the TReDS window. OCEN is growing fast with 30% MoM increase in number of loans due to the framework capabilities.

MetricJan-25Feb-25Mar-25Apr-25May-25Jun-25Jul-25
No. of Loans Disbursed895156731793861455251036233
Disbursement Amount in Lacs2517336713911761390821062113886

For more information, please visit: http://ocen.dev

Please note: The blog post is authored by our volunteer, Rahul Bhaik

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OCEN June 2025 Snapshot

Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN) is designed to serve borrowers across all turnover bands — including micro and small businesses whose buyers are not large enough to qualify for TReDS. This inclusivity enables it to reach segments of the MSME sector that remain underserved by formal credit channels.

OCEN’s ability to leverage alternative underwriting models, specialized loan products, and digital collections to offer small‑ticket, short‑tenure working capital loans to MSMEs solves for smaller businesses with small ticket loan requirements who are beyond the formal credit net. With this unique framework, OCEN is expected to see a decent growth in number of loans. This growth would be a significant reflection of ensuring access of credit to the underserved who only need smaller loans for shorter tenures and will increase penetration in the new to credit MSME segment. Below is a snapshot of OCEN’s journey for the last 6 months:

MetricJan-25Feb-25Mar-25Apr-25May-25Jun-25
No. of Lenders Live on OCEN777888
No. of Borrower Agents Live666666
No. of Technology Service Providers (TSPs) with active deployment 233333
No. of Loan Products111111121212
No. of Loans Disbursed89515673179386145525103
Disbursement Amount₹25.17 Crore₹33.67 Crore₹139.11 Crore₹76.13 Crore₹90.82 Crore₹106.21 Crore
Average Loan Ticket Size₹2.81 Lakh₹2.14 Lakh₹4.37 Lakh₹1.97 Lakh₹1.99 Lakh₹2.08 Lakh

For more information, please visit: http://ocen.dev

Please note: The blog post is authored by our volunteer, Rahul Bhaik

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OCEN Ecosystem Progress Snapshot:

The Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN) post its initial pilot deployment and continuous upgrades and improvements has seen growing participation across the ecosystem. OCEN’s transition from its early stages into the growth phase is now reflecting in its growing volumes and addition of new ecosystem partners. 

Monthly Progress Report: 

With the start of the new financial year, the April-June quarter is usually considered a sluggish season in financial services, more particularly in lending business. Corresponding trend reflects in the April performance on the OCEN traction as well, however April & May are still looking progressive in comparison to Jan & Feb performance, considering March financial year end rush as an exception. As newer products and lenders go live on OCEN, the trendline growth looks promising. 

Here’s a quick look at the latest numbers on the OCEN ecosystem:

MetricJan-25Feb-25Mar-25Apr-25May-25
No. of Lenders Live on OCEN77788
No. of Borrower Agents Live66666
No. of Technology Service Providers (TSPs) with active deployment 23333
No. of Loan Products1111111212
No. of Loans Disbursed8951567317938614552
Disbursement Amount₹25.17 Crore₹33.67 Crore₹139.11 Crore₹76.13 Crore₹90.82 Crore
Average Loan Ticket Size₹2.81 Lakh₹2.14 Lakh₹4.37 Lakh₹1.97 Lakh₹1.99 Lakh

OCEN continues to engage with ecosystem partners to build the momentum for new cash flow lending products for MSMEs.

For more information, please visit: http://ocen.dev

Please note: The blog post is authored by our volunteer, Rahul Bhaik

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OCEN: Credit Access for MSMEs continues to grow

The volumes and traction on Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN) continues to grow month on month. The growing trajectory highlights OCEN’s ability to streamline and democratise credit access for MSMEs by leveraging digital public infrastructure and fostering collaboration among lenders, agents, and technology providers. 

Here is a snapshot of the OCEN ecosystem’s key updates for March:

MetricJan-25Feb-25Mar-25
No. of Lenders Live on OCEN777
No. of Borrower Agents Live666
No. of Technology Service Providers (TSPs) with active deployment 233
No. of Loan Products111111
No. of Loans Disbursed89515673179
Disbursement Amount₹25.17 Crore₹33.67 Crore₹139.11 Crore
Average Loan Ticket Size₹2.81 Lakh₹2.14 Lakh₹4.37 Lakh

As OCEN continues to evolve, it is poised to further bridge the credit gap for MSMEs, enabling faster, more transparent, and more inclusive financial support for this vital sector of the Indian economy.

For more information, please visit: http://ocen.dev

Please note: The blog post is authored by our volunteer, Rahul Bhaik

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OCEN: Advancing Digital Public Infrastructure for MSME Credit Access

The Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN) is steadily progressing from its early stages into a more robust growth phase. With its current ecosystem participants, OCEN has started facilitating smoother credit delivery to MSMEs. At the same time, numerous other players are integrating into the protocol and developing specialized loan offerings tailored to the needs of MSMEs.

Here’s a snapshot of the OCEN ecosystem’s key updates for February:

MetricJan 2025Feb 2025
No. of Lenders Live on OCEN77
No. of Borrower Agents Live66
No. of Technology Service Providers (TSPs) with active deployment 23
No. of Loan Products1111
No. of Loans Disbursed8951567
Disbursement Amount₹25.17 Crore₹33.67 Crore
Average Loan Ticket Size₹2.81 Lakh₹2.14 Lakh

OCEN continues to engage with new participants to further expand the ecosystem, adding new products and scaling up efforts to transform credit access for MSMEs on a large scale.

For more information, please visit: http://ocen.dev

Please note: The blog post is authored by our volunteer, Rahul Bhaik

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A Budget with Good Intentions but lacks drive to realize Viksit Bharat & EODB

iSPIRT Foundation, a technology think-and-do tank, believes India’s hard problems can be solved only by leveraging public technology for private innovation. iSPIRT, as a think-and-do-tank, pioneered the concept of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI)

Industry watched and waited to see if this budget will have bold, strategic announcements with long-term vision, aiming for Viksit Bharat 2047. Instead the budget has become more a tactical prescription for handling short-term economic correction.

Three themes capture our attention in the 2025 budget: The Investment in Innovation, Regulatory Reforms and MSME Credit.

Given our Product Nation initiative at iSPIRT, we were looking for bold steps in two major areas: Private sector R&D funding and Ease of Doing Business.

The funding for R&D made incremental progress in this budget. Under the theme ‘Investing in Innovation” the Finance Minister announced Rs. 20,000 Crore to be allocated from the policy announcement of 1 Lakh Crore made in previous budgets. There is no major decision or clarity on how this funding will be routed. In addition, intent is expressed to explore a Deep-Tech fund in the future.

Similarly two welcome announcements towards achieving strategic autonomy are, an outlay for 20,000 crore to develop Small Modular Reactors (SMR) and operationalise at least five indigenously developed SMRs by 2033 and, a National Geospatial Mission to develop foundational geospatial infrastructure and data.

There is a marked improvement in intent to solve the Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) problem in the budget made evident by yesterday’s Economic Survey.

We have been pursuing the Government of India (GOI) on EoDB to implement a comprehensive three-pronged approach, to bring India into the top 5 or 10 EoDB countries. This includes decriminalising 1200 provisions; rationalising multiple laws and implementing a National Regulatory Compliance grid at the center and then extending it to states. Our approach gels with the “Whole of Nation” thinking given by the Honorable Prime Minister.

The GOI appears to reflect this thinking in the statement, “A light-touch regulatory framework based on principles and trust will unleash productivity and employment. Through this framework, we will update regulations that were made under old laws. To develop this modern, flexible, people-friendly, and trust-based regulatory framework appropriate for the twenty-first century…”.

However, the specific action of forming a High-Level Committee for regulatory reforms that “will be set up for a review of all non-financial sector regulations, certifications, licenses, and permissions”, is welcome but appears to be incremental in nature and a slow-moving approach.

The Janvishwas 2.0 announcement has also been repeated stating 100 items to be taken up instead of 1200 reported by us.

Sudhir Singh, iSPIRT’s policy expert volunteer said, “The concept of digital transformation through National Regulatory Compliance Grid (NRCG) has been ignored in the budget. However, another idea of “Digital Port”, pursued by iSPIRT for more than two years now, on digital transformation of cross border trade has received attention and GoI seems to have framed it as ‘BharatTradeNet’ in the budget 2025.”

The budget speech states, “a digital public infrastructure, ‘BharatTradeNet’ (BTN) for international trade will be set-up as a unified platform for trade documentation and financing solutions”. This indeed is an important and welcome announcement.

The Finance Ministry’s move to separate R&D funding and Startup funding is encouraging. The startup-related announcements reflect the government’s continued support to startups.

The government has taken several steps to boost credit enablement for SME and Nano enterprises, a significant part of Priority Sector Lending. Some good announcements were made such as the Kisan Credit Card (KCC) limit increasing from INR 3 lakh to 5 lakh, which in three states – Karnataka, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh – is based on Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN), an initiative of iSPIRT. Other welcome announcements include an increase in credit guarantee cover for MSMEs from INR 5 crores to 10 crores, introduction of customized credit cards for MSMEs, and capital infusion into select public sector banks.

A new Fund-of-Funds with a fresh contribution of another 10,000 crore has been announced. It is encouraging to see the time limit for u/s 80-IAC to avail income tax exemption benefit for startups has been extended by 5 years to 01.04.2030. Another announcement of interest for startups is an extension of credit credit availability with a guaranteed cover of INR 10 crores to 20 crores, with the guarantee fee being moderated to 1 per cent for loans in 27 focus sectors important for Atmanirbhar Bharat.

iSPIRT cofounder Sharad Sharma said, “It is heartening to see private sector R&D funding rolling out with a 20,000 crore fund allocation. Formation of Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) committee is also welcome. However, there is a need to take big moves and expedite these steps to meet 2047 deadlines. BharatTradeNet is a welcome announcement and we hope there will be a thorough and transparent industry consultation on it. Overall we are missing bold and specific actions on Strategic Autonomy and Product Nation. “

About iSPIRT Foundation – We are a non-profit think-and-do tank that builds public goods for Indian product startups to thrive and grow. iSPIRT aims to do what DARPA or Stanford University did in Silicon Valley for startups. iSPIRT builds four types of public goods – technology building blocks (aka India Stack), startup-friendly policies, market access programs like M&A Connect, and Playbooks that codify scarce tacit knowledge for product entrepreneurs of India. For more, visit www.ispirt.in.

For further queries please reach out via email: [email protected] , [email protected] , or [email protected]

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As the AI race across the world heats up, a post: “𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐚 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐚 𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐒”

To succeed at AI, we need a whole-of-nation approach involving deep-tech startups, enabling industrial policy and pre-commercial publicly-funded research.

When the Biden Administration released its AI Diffusion Executive Order a few weeks back restricting GPUs to countries, it became clear that having strategic autonomy in AI was of paramount importance to India.

Just being the use-case capital for AI wasn’t the right way to go.

India doesn’t wish to be a trade colony of China or the technology colony of the US.

What makes AI different is that it needs a whole-of-nation approach. To win at AI we need deep-tech startups, enabling industrial policy and pre-commercial publicly-funded research. It is only when all three come together that magic can happen.

Our resistance to the whole-of-nation approach is understandable. After all, our IT Services and SaaS industry came up without the whole-of-nation approach. So, many people thought that the same playbook would apply to AI.

China has proved with DeepSeek’s R1 and Moonshot AI [another Chinese company’s] Kimi k1.5 that a whole-of-nation approach can have big payoffs. In India, this approach has worked for cryogenic engines, 4G/5G telecom equipment and India Stack. We do remarkable things when we set our mind to it!

Yes, we have lost some time due to the use-case captial camp. But all is not lost. The field is still young and many areas like neurosymbolic AI are very much open.

The Biden AI Diffusion order, and Chinese success has given new vigour to the whole-of-nation camp within government, private sector and civil society. The debate is now over: You will see some good developments become visible in the coming months  #AI #StrategicAutonomy

Also see: https://www.moneycontrol.com/technology/deepseek-s-llm-success-triggers-big-debate-is-india-s-hesitation-a-strategic-mistake-article-12921811.html

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8th Open House Session- Ballon Volunteers

Thank you so much for your patience…

Many of you asked when the volunteer programme would be available to apply, and here we are again. We do have some changes, though, so please pay attention.

This application process will be available only for the next couple of months and close by December 20th, 2024. It’s on a rolling basis, so apply immediately.

Many of you are already familiar with iSPIRT and its activities; this is your chance to join this volunteer movement. So take some time to review the programmes listed and watch the videos, not just the current ones but also the previous ones, to better understand the journey. Also, please read the Playground Coda and the Volunteer Handbook.

Are there tools we can help build to solve privacy issues, or what kind of packets will help get the internet to remote parts of India? Do you have a better solution to some pressing matters discussed in the videos? Then, you need to apply. Some legacy options and some new options are also available.

Is there some project that strikes your fancy, some part that calls out to you, and you know you can do it? To apply, click this link and follow the process.

I am reminding you again that the deadline is December 20th, 2024.

A journey with iSPIRT is also about the journey with yourself.

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Budget 2024 – Empowering Startups and MSMEs, and Doubling Down on DPIs and R&D

This 2024 Budget coming post-election has aroused the most curiosity since the budget of 2014. It is for two reasons that this 2024 Budget is significant as we work towards a Product Nation: Reason 1 is for this budget’s Innovation and related public spending on private innovation and Reason 2 is for the next-generation reforms to create a simpler regulatory environment. It is heartening to note that both items are priority areas.

The continuity of the interim budget announcement of 1 lakh crore for private R&D funding is encouraging enough for the startup ecosystem. Under the Vishvamitra initiative, iSPIRT has been pursuing funding at scale for private sector-led R&D and its commercialization. The announcements of funding research in highly sensitive strategic areas such as Small Modular Nuclear Reactors and setting up a 1000 crore venture capital fund for the Space economy have been on our list of initiatives to advocate for and it is heartening to see the Government address R&D investments in geopolitically sensitive areas. 

The Finance Minister announced, “We will set up a mechanism for spurring private sector-driven research and innovation at commercial scale with a financing pool of 1 lakh crore.” What and how this mechanism will be set up will be critical for enabling R&D in the country to achieve Viksit Bharat 2047.

Among iSPIRT’s top  initiatives is the Stay-in-India checklist, and the request to remove the “Angel Tax” for all classes of investors. The removal of angel tax is the biggest highlight of this budget for the startup ecosystem. The announcement comes after decades of struggle and persuasion. Finally the government has recognised the role of startups in generating employment and has acted in a positive direction. 

There is a huge amount of work pending to reform Ease-of-Doing Business (EoDB) if India is to achieve the set objective of Viksit Bharat 2047. The Finance Minister stating an  intent to “formulate an Economic Policy Framework” to set the “scope of the next generation of reforms for facilitating employment opportunities and sustaining high growth” perhaps speaks about the government’s thinking on it.  

The government’s intention to involve states in ease of doing business (EoDB) efforts is also a very welcome step. We hope the next moves are swift and the government seriously attempts to at least be in the top 10 EoDB destinations globally. This is much needed for MSMEs, Startups, and even to attract FDI in GCCs. The economic survey tabled yesterday also aligns with this thought process. 

“We have successfully used technology for improving productivity and bridging inequality in our economy during the past 10 years” said the budget speech. Public investment in Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) coupled with innovations by the private sector has been a well-accepted norm now. The Government is serious about using the DPI approach in multiple areas, from agriculture to education, etc. The increased penetration of DPI will eventually help digitalization and penetration of software products in the economy. 

The budget recognising MSME credit as one big area requiring attention has also called for several actions in this direction. One important step is involving PSU Banks to build their in-house capability to assess MSMEs for credit using an MSME’s digital footprint, instead of relying on external assessment. This will encourage banks to develop cash flow based lending on lines of another initiative of iSPIRT – the Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN) that focuses on information based collateral lending rather than asset based collateral lending which in turn could help in developing a new credit assessment model that evaluates the digital footprints of MSMEs in the economy. 

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Interim Budget 2024 – DPI’s the new factor of productivity

This being an interim budget, much was not expected as far as new announcements and taxation changes. However, for iSPIRT and the Product ecosystem of the country, it is heartening to know that some of our initiatives and thoughts as a ‘think-tank’ have become central to thinking of Government at the leadership level. The following are important to note

The Finance Minister mentioned that “DPI (digital public infrastructure), a new factor of production in the 21st century, is instrumental in the formalization of the economy”. She also mentioned the G-20 successes. ISPIRT pioneered the concept of DPI and played a vital role in rolling out many DPIs and covering the DPI advocacy as a knowledge partner to the Digital Economy Working Group. 

The second announcement that can hugely impact product nation-building is the funding of Research. FM announced that, “A corpus of rupees one lakh crore will be established with a fifty-year interest-free loan. The corpus will provide long-term financing or refinancing with long tenors and low or nil interest rates. This will encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation significantly in sunrise domains.” Also, the thought of generating employment and empowering youth was central to this announcement. We hope that post-election a robust mechanism can be developed to implement this and capitalize on nation-building. This announcement is also important from iSPIRT’s thought process where a continuous push under its “Vishwamitra” initiative is being out on funding R&D in multiple ways at scale. 

Also notable is,  a new scheme for deep-tech technologies for defence aiming at expediting ‘Aatma-nirbharta’ is on the anvil. 

Although nothing new has been announced, Start-ups are central to the Government’s thinking for economic development. 

Overall it is a futuristic thinking budget speech with an emphasis on deep-tech, research funding, Capital inflows and startups along with capex and infrastructure. 

Though there was a mention of ‘Reform, Perform, and Transform’ as a guiding principle, the budget did not touch upon any specific reform or intent on Ease of Doing business. We wish this becomes an important agenda item along with funding research for our businesses to succeed in global competition. 

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Economic Transformation through AI: Key pillar to a large Indian Economy in Global Top 3

In the rapidly evolving landscape of the AI economy, the choices made today will reverberate for generations. As custodians of India’s future, we must recognize the urgency of embracing AI as a lynchpin of economic growth. The time to act is now!

In an era characterized by relentless technological advancement, a nation’s economic growth trajectory hinges on its ability to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI). Goldman Sachs reported that generative AI could raise global GDP by 7%. By 2030, this AI driven Intelligence Economy might add $15.7tn of new economic value as per PWC research.

With its burgeoning tech industry, diverse and large data pool and remarkable human capital, India stands at the precipice of an economic transformation that could either propel it to global leadership or condemn it to follow in the wake of other trailblazers. As political decision-makers, the imperative to recognize and seize this opportunity cannot be overstated in view of India’s bid to become one of the top 3 economies of the world. The availability of the DEPA Training Cycle and the DPDP Bill passage through the Parliament open the door to immediate and strategic action via the creation of a large AI economy.

I. The AI Imperative for Global Competitiveness:

India’s demographic dividend of 900mn+ people is no secret but must be coupled with technological prowess to ensure a multiplier effect for sustained growth. As global economies increasingly pivot towards AI-driven industries, overlooking this shift risks consigning India to a secondary role on the global stage. To maintain competitiveness, India must embrace AI not merely as a tool but as the very foundation of its economic strategy going forward. It must ensure that it is not just a consumer of AI but a critical creator of AI. In fact, it must aim to emerge as one of the 3 AI superpowers in the world.

II. Safe AI Leadership Depends on Data

India’s DEPA Training makes privacy-preserving collaboration between Training Dataset Providers and Modelers (called Training Dataset Consumers) possible at a large scale, which is a critical element in AI journey. The DEPA system does not rely on hard-to-implement enforcement of legal covenants around Anonymized Datasets, as is the case in countries like the US, where AI companies are fighting constant litigation. Instead, it depends on computational privacy guarantees in the use of aggregated datasets. This is core to enabling safe AI systems, built with reliable and traceable access to datasets. Then, it can be deployed quickly with human alignment that India can provide with its billion plus users. As India begins to unlock continental-scale datasets using this system, it will give rise to a vibrant ecosystem of AI Modelers. This dataset advantage in AI is not to be underestimated. By focusing on early Safe AI adoption, India can secure a foothold in these sectors, attracting global investment and cementing its position as an innovation hub whose AI innovations would be adopted by societies around the world.

III. Addressing Socioeconomic Disparities: Remote AI driven workflows & 5G

Harnessing AI’s potential can also serve as a powerful tool to address India’s socioeconomic disparities. AI-driven solutions can optimize resource allocation, improve public service delivery, reduce cost of access and create job opportunities across urban and rural areas. With massive 5G rollout, the possibility of digital global work aided by AI is here. It can dramatically bring income opportunity to rural and smaller cities, if we can bring in Indic language AI tools, which lower the bar for participating in the global workflows. By proactively leveraging AI to bridge gaps and enhance productivity, India’s leadership can demonstrate a commitment to inclusive growth and lay the foundation for a more equitable society. All the while reducing strains of growing urbanization, which might be disastrous for its overburdened large cities.

IV. The Gameplan for AI Leadership: Missing piece of compute clusters

DEPA Training will safely and responsibly unlock the collaboration between India Training Dataset Providers and Modelers. We have the talent already and the market scale to do Reinforcement Learning with Humans in the Loop. What we lack is tensor-scale computing enabled for Industry, startups, academia and Govt itself. The Government of India must address this by enabling the creation of many, not one, tensor-scale GPU cloud providers. There are many ways to do this: Challenge Grants, Viability-gap funding for cloud providers, and Matching-grants for Modelers. We favor the Matching Grants method for effectiveness, transparency, and competition. In addition, we must seek to create AI on the edge compute ecosystem for a strategic future.

V. Collaborative Diplomacy and Global Alliances:

AI does not recognize national borders, and collaboration is key to advancing the field. At the same time, we must recognize that Nvidia H100 boards are already on the US Export Control List for China. The US might leverage its muscle further at some time in the future. We must therefore have a strategic perspective in making our aggregate AI capability and datasets available to others based on a principle of reciprocity. We must build careful alliances with a broad set of players in US, EU and Asia that will accelerate India’s AI capabilities but also position the nation as a global AI thought leader.

VI. The Consequences of Inaction:

The consequences of neglecting AI’s potential are dire. India risks becoming a mere consumer of AI technologies, ceding economic leadership to countries that have embraced AI as a strategic priority. China, our neighbor, has famously vowed to be the sole AI superpower by 2030. This passivity could lead to missed opportunities, economic stagnation, and a loss of global influence. It may even result in India failing to breach the top 3 economies, , as we might have to buy both oil and artificial brains, draining our resources for welfare schemes for our large population. That could risk demographic disaster instead of demographic dividend.

Conclusion: We need to act now!

In the rapidly evolving landscape of the AI economy, the choices made today will reverberate for generations. As custodians of India’s future, we must recognize the urgency of embracing AI as a lynchpin of economic growth. The time to act is now! We must catalyze innovation, ensure global competitiveness, and create a prosperous future where India’s leadership is defined not by its past but by its capacity to shape the AI-powered future world decisively.

Sharad Sherma is co-founder of iSPIRT Foundation. Umankant Soni is the Chairman AI foundry, General Partner ART Venture Fund.

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Volunteer Hero: Amit Ranjan

“That will never work!”

To iSPIRT volunteers, those four words are a rallying cry. Words that make us intrepid souls smile with a quiet confidence and inspire an iron will to get the job done. The best among us turn those words into their life’s work by building systems that serve millions of Indians. 

iSPIRT’s best work has been in building digital public goods for India. This work is inevitably anchored by a volunteer who selflessly serves the mission; with a relentlessness and belief that could wring water from stone. Today, we celebrate one such volunteer hero: Amit Ranjan.

He had just sold his startup SlideShare to LinkedIn and had set a high watermark for products built in India for the world. After a successful exit, unlike what many others in his position might have done, Amit took the less travelled path of working within the government. Contrary to what one might imagine, even in his new role, Amit crackled with an energy that promised to single-handedly drag government departments into the future; and his eyes would sparkle as he showed you a demo of what would eventually become one of the pillars of India Stack: DigiLocker.

India Stack was built to enable a presenceless, paperless, and cashless society. Aadhaar and UPI were instrumental in enabling presenceless and cashless transactions. DigiLocker is another piece of the puzzle. Amit rolled up his sleeves, joined MeitY, and architected a national federated data and document network for India’s ~1.5 billion citizens. 

Today, DigiLocker functions as an interoperable public-private ecosystem for paperless service delivery by digitizing citizen records and enabling their digital usage. Documents and certificates issued by different government agencies such as Aadhaar, PAN Card, Driving License, and even school and college certificates are available today on DigiLocker. The system Amit helped build has led to increased transparency, reduced bureaucracy, and significant cost savings for both private and public sector organizations.

Nearly 15 crore Indians are already DigiLocker users today, using 5.6 billion documents issued by almost 2,500 issuing entities. The impact is felt even in the mundane daily activities like checking into an airport or showing your driver’s license using DigiLocker during a routine traffic stop. And the system is just getting started.

Those who have worked with Amit in the government (like Abhishek Singh IAS, President & CEO NeGD; MD & CEO Digital India Corporation (DIC); CEO Karmayogi Bharat; at Govt of India) sing his praises the same as us. To quote Mr Singh, “Amit Ranjan is a Hero. I believe that we need to celebrate the Heroes and the teams that go into building these Digital Public Goods”.

Creating impact like this on a national scale through sheer grit and commitment inspires every single iSPIRT volunteer. And that’s why we choose to recognize and celebrate Amit with iSPIRT’s highest commendation; To us, he truly is a “Volunteer Hero”!

By Sharad Sharma, Dr Renuka Garg, Shoaib Ahmed and Pankaj Jaju for Volunteer Fellow Council

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iSPIRT’s response to Union Budget 2023

Budget 2023 – Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) the ‘Mantra’ for New India

iSPIRT Foundation, a technology think-and-do tank, believes that India’s hard problems can be solved only by leveraging public technology for private innovation. iSPIRT as a think tank pioneered the Digital Public infrastructure (DPIs)

India is at the cusp of what could be the most exciting quarter century of its post-independence existence, referred to as ‘Amrit Kaal’ by the Economic Survey yesterday and today in the Budget speech. The Economic Survey also mentioned that GDP could be boosted by 1% by Digital Public Infrastructure (DPIs), where India is stealing a March on the world for sure. 

The second testimony to the important contribution of DPIs to the economy comes in the budget speech today when the finance minister stated, “India’s rising global profile is because of several accomplishments: unique world class digital public infrastructure, e.g., Aadhaar, Co-Win and UPI” in the forefront. 

Development of DPIs, Stay-in-India Checklist (for Ease of Doing business of Startups), and a ‘jugalbandi’ between public technology and private innovation, through techno-legal regulations, are central to iSPIRT’s work in an attempt to build Product Nation. 

The union budget 2023, brings in cheer to see attempts on the following:

  • Digital Public Infrastructure: The resolve to deepen the DPI and the belief in their role in economic growth. India Stack to build the DPIs has become central to the thought process. Taking the queue ahead the budget 2023 announced the development of DPI for Agriculture, which will be an open source, OpenAPI digital public good, to build inclusive farmer-centric solutions, credit & insurance, farm inputs market intelligence. An Agriculture Accelerator Fund has been announced to promote Agritech start-ups.
  1. Vigyan Infrastructure: efforts to boost R&D, though limited to some sectors right now. Notable among these are – It encourages private sector R&D teams for encouraging collaborative research and innovation in select ICMR labs in the PPP model
  2. One hundred labs for developing applications using 5G services will be set up in engineering institutions. 
  3. Center of Excellence for AI for “Make AI in India and Make AI work for India
  • MSMEs funding & growth is part of the budget thought process, which may lead to the use of another DPI called Open Credit Enablement Networks (OCEN) for enabling MSME funding.
  • The importance of Ease of doing business is reflected in some announcements like using PAN as a Common digital identifier and entity DigiLocker for MSMEs.
  • Wanting to keep the startup revolution going is reflected in the intent to use Startups to build technology in multiple sectors and also use the policy for a new India.

However, beneath all the euphoria, some chronic issues remained to be addressed. The disappointment is on the Stay-in-India checklist (a list of Ease of doing business issues for Startups) to stop startups from slipping from India, which has not been addressed. The checklist is being continuously pursued by iSPIRT and is much needed to provide a competitive edge for India to refrain startups from leaving her jurisdiction.  

Overall it’s heartening to see the vision statement in budget, “Our vision for the Amrit Kaal includes technology-driven and knowledge-based economy”.   

About iSPIRT Foundation – We are a non-profit think-and-do tank that builds public goods for Indian product startups to thrive and grow. iSPIRT aims to do for Indian startups what DARPA or Stanford did in Silicon Valley. iSPIRT builds four types of public goods – technology building blocks (aka India stack), startup-friendly policies, market access programs like M&A Connect and Playbooks that codify scarce tacit knowledge for product entrepreneurs of India.

For more, visit www.ispirt.in.For further queries, reach out to Email:  [email protected] or [email protected].

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WANI 3.0: Unleashing Business Innovation and Open Wireless Network Growth for Universal Connectivity

PM-WANI has allowed sachetised access to WiFi connectivity. However, the true vision of WANI standard, where small business owners can participate as network service providers resulting in fast network growth, has not been realised. We propose the next version of the WANI standard where a more open ecosystem can be enabled to facilitate business interactions such as delegated payments and roaming, which in turn can catalyse increased user base, rapid network growth, and business innovations.

The PM-WANI framework is revised periodically, taking into account the new developments, security updates, etc. Version 1.0 was released in 2020 and this was used for the pilot deployments. The updated 2.0 specification was released in 2021 and is the current version in use. You could read more about these versions here. This whitepaper defines iSPIRT’s vision for the PM-WANI Version 3.0 specification

PM WANI 3.0: Unleashing Business Innovation and Open Wireless Network Growth for Universal Connectivity [v.2] from ProductNation/iSPIRT

The blog post and proposal are authored by Saurabh Chakrabarti, Nilesh Gupta, Vishal Sevani, Sharad Sharma, and Himanshu Tyagi on behalf of iSPIRT Foundation. Nilesh Gupta and Himanshu Tyagi are faculty members at the Indian Institute of Management Nagpur and Indian Institute of Science, respectively, and they also represent their views as researchers on the topic.

The authors would like to thank Centre For Development Of Telematics (CDoT) for their detailed discussions and conversations about the workings of PM-WANI. Would also like to thank Bhuvnesh Sachdeva, Shubhendu Sharma, and Satyam Darmora for their insightful comments about the WANI ecosystem.