The Times of India | 27 December 2022
India is a vast country, and sometimes it is difficult for us to comprehend how extensive it is. A way to better visualise it is that India can accommodate the population of 12 large countries, including the USA, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, and Argentina. For a country this size, with its immense disadvantages, it now stands a marvel as the fifth largest economy in the world. The secret sauce behind this growth is not just our demographic dividend but the development of innovative technology solutions deployed at scale.
Most countries have evolved from physical currency to plastic cards to electronic money. In the case of India, given the almost miraculous properties of UPI and the India Stack (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile), India leapfrogged from a cash-only economy to a predominantly digital one. The ability to transfer money peer to peer and accept payments via UPI, even deep into Tier 3 markets, has transformed what would have previously seemed impossible. And yet as is the case with most things in the country, there are areas of our population that are yet to accrue these benefits.