India Built the DPI Playbook. What Happens When the World Starts Using It?
When we talk about India’s Digital Public Infrastructure, three names usually come to mind: Aadhaar, UPI and Account Aggregator.
But that is only the visible layer.
Underneath sits a much broader collection of digital building blocks for identity, payments, data sharing and verifiable credentials—and increasingly, these ideas are being adapted for countries well beyond India.
In this episode of India FinTech Diaries, we speak with Kamya Chandra, CEO and Co-founder of the Center for Digital Public Infrastructure (CDPI), about the evolution of India’s DPI journey and what it takes to translate that thinking to other countries.
Kamya brings a fascinating perspective to the conversation, having worked on India’s Account Aggregator framework and DEPA, at the World Bank, and now with CDPI.
Key themes from the episode
🏗️ DPI Is Much Bigger Than Aadhaar and UPI
India’s digital infrastructure is made up of numerous interconnected building blocks across identity, payments and data sharing. Many of the most important ones are largely invisible to consumers.
🤝 The Hardest Part Isn’t Always Technology
Kamya argues that the biggest challenge in building Account Aggregator wasn’t technology or regulatory resistance—it was getting organisations accustomed to competing to cooperate around shared infrastructure.
💳 India’s Credit Problem Is a Data Problem
The conversation explores how trusted, verifiable credentials can reduce the cost of onboarding and underwriting, potentially making smaller-ticket lending economically viable at scale.
🌍 DPI Can’t Simply Be Copy-Pasted
CDPI’s international approach is deliberately designed around existing infrastructure in each country. The objective isn’t to recreate Aadhaar or India Stack elsewhere, but to build on what already exists.
🏢 The Next Frontier May Be Enterprise DPI
The principles that made individual digital identities and payments scalable could increasingly be applied to businesses—identity, payments, data sharing and, importantly, delegation.
🤖 AI Needs DPI as Its Foundation
One of the most interesting parts of the conversation is Kamya’s argument that AI and DPI shouldn’t be thought of as separate worlds. Trusted identity, consent, payments and data-sharing rails could become essential infrastructure for an agentic economy.
🔮 A New Wave of Fintech Innovation Could Be Coming
Rather than believing that India’s fintech opportunity is exhausted, Kamya sees significant potential in combining AI with India’s existing DPI to reach populations that remain outside the digital financial system.
This is a conversation about much more than fintech. It’s about how digital infrastructure gets built, how countries create trust at scale, and what happens when the infrastructure beneath financial services becomes programmable.
Timeline
00:00 Start
00:46 Introduction
01:34 About Kamya
03:49 Kamya’s experience with Indian DPI
08:50 Does mandated participation work for DPI adoption
15:46 How identity DPI helps financial services
22:01 CDPI and DaaS
26:13 Cost of Trust vs DPI enabled trust
30:03 Tales from the front lines
36:56 Enterprise DPI
40:36 DPI and AI