Over 40 percent of Indians now use digital formats; Some of these people don’t even have smart phones.
Over 40 percent of Indians now use digital formats; Some of these people don’t even have smart phones.
Nandan Nilekani, chairman and co-founder of Infosys and founding chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India, said that India is the most data-powered country in the world as it already has one billion people and 20 billion businesses who can access their data. Huh.
Historically, he said, the collateral for loans has been physical assets. But for the first time, people in this country have been able to use digital footprints as assets for lending purposes.
“This is called information collateral to get the loan. Employees can avail loans by submitting a digital footprint on their salaries and expenses and small business on their transactions, Nilekani said in his keynote address at The India Advantage Summit 2022, an event held here on Wednesday, September 14.
More than 40 percent of Indians today use digital formats, thanks to the country’s various digitization initiatives. He said that around 26 crore people are using UPI and 15 crore people use Aadhaar-enabled payment system to withdraw money from their bank accounts.
“So over 400 million people are using digital mode to withdraw money from their accounts. That is, about 40 to 45 percent of Indians are using digital formats. 10 years ago it was zero percent. This is a dramatic shift in consumer behavior and consumer usage that has become very powerful,” he said.
Emphasizing on the prevalence of the digital format, he said, “So if you think about it, overall, people using Aadhaar-enabled payment systems are generally not people with smart phones.”
He said that digital technology has made the Unified Payment Interface system of payment ubiquitous in the country and thus is influencing the change immensely.