Mar 15, 2025 · 1h 59m · neon-show
$200B in UPI,1.3B Aadhaar Users, 943M on ID Platform: Why More Indians Must Know about DPI
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In this in-depth episode of The Neon Show, iSPIRT co-founder Sharad Sharma and host Siddharth Ahluwalia explore India's blueprint for technological sovereignty, analyzing Digital Public Infrastructure, AI strategy, techno-legal architectures, and deep-tech ecosystem building. Sharma advocates for institutional paranoia, open standards, and coordinated multi-generational leadership to transition India from an IT services hub into a global product nation.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
Siddhartha as informed peer 3.8 Guest teaching 7.4 Guest disagreement 2.0 Siddhartha pushing back 0.4
speaking balance: gold is Siddhartha, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:03:00 Calling out US Big Tech gatekeeping and Wall Street financialization
Sharad aggressively challenges the US innovation narrative, accusing Big Tech of erecting artificial barriers to monopolize AI and Wall Street of gutting iconic R&D giants like Boeing and IBM.
Hardest push from Siddhartha ▶ 49:45 Host pushes back on fintech regulatory instabilityThe host challenges the policy environment by highlighting founder frustration with quarterly regulatory revisions that render the fintech ecosystem murky and uninvestable.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 16:00 Reframing domestic UPI success versus international adoption realitySharad dispels the host's patriotic optimism, showing that India failed to export UPI abroad because it refused to open protocols, allowing Brazil's Pix to capture international market momentum.
Siddhartha holds their own ▶ 30:09 Host counters tech determinism using Sam Altman's shifting stanceThe host demonstrates sharp industry awareness by citing how Sam Altman originally told Indian founders competing with OpenAI was hopeless, only to return two years later seeking partnerships.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Siddhartha as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Siddhartha pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Power of Technology in Geopolitical Autonomy | 4 | 6 | 2 | 1 | The host sets up the global geopolitical and AI context following a one-year gap between discussions. Sharad expands on the premise, articulating how technology power is superseding military and economic power in establishing national sovereignty. | |
| Globalizing India Stack and the Foundation of MOSIP | 3 | 8 | 1 | 0 | The host asks about India Stack going global over the past eighteen months. Sharad gives an in-depth masterclass on digital primitives (identity, payments, consent) and references the foundational Rajini persona behind financial inclusion. | |
| The Rise of DEPA and Global Adoption of Account Aggregators | 2 | 7 | 1 | 0 | Sharad outlines the explosive metrics of the Account Aggregator framework under DEPA and projects run-rate milestones. The host simply listens as Sharad breaks down the architectural expansion into training and non-personal data. | |
| Defining Digital Public Infrastructure on the World Stage | 4 | 8 | 3 | 1 | The host suggests Indians need better internal marketing to build confidence in domestic tech. Sharad counters by warning that first-mover advantage is fragile, pointing out that Brazil's Pix is outcompeting UPI globally due to Indian overconfidence. | |
| Non-Weaponizable Infrastructure and Federated ID Systems | 3 | 7 | 2 | 0 | The host asks for definitions of foundational terms like MOSIP and DEPA. Sharad explains federated ID chains and highlights the vital importance of non-weaponizable infrastructure to ensure sovereign adoption. | |
| The Four Pillars of DPI: Citizen Stack and Global Standards | 2 | 8 | 1 | 0 | Sharad delivers a structured monologue laying out the four pillars of globalizing DPI: Citizen Stack branding, DPI Sutras, homegrown Technology Standards Organizations, and sovereign funding. | |
| Building the Funding Ecosystem and Embracing Paranoia | 5 | 7 | 2 | 1 | The host and guest discuss the cultural lack of paranoia in Indian history, comparing historical conquests and epic narratives with Vietnam's underdog mindset. | |
| The AI Landscape: Shifting Narratives and Frugal Innovation | 6 | 6 | 3 | 0 | The host highlights how Sam Altman reversed his dismissive stance on Indian AI capabilities after DeepSeek disrupted the LLM cost narrative. Sharad underscores ISRO's frugal engineering history as proof that India excels under constraints. | |
| Lessons from Net Neutrality and Multi-Layer Regulation | 4 | 8 | 2 | 0 | Prompted by a question on FinTech growth, Sharad reviews the Net Neutrality battle against Free Basics, detailing how single-agent principles reshaped cable TV, mutual funds, and online travel booking. | |
| Techno-Legal Architecture: The Success of GST Implementation | 4 | 8 | 1 | 0 | Sharad explains the concept of techno-legal architecture using India's GST line-item settlement design as the prime case study, giving credit to architects Ajay Bhushan Pandey and Bharat Goenka. | |
| Challenges and Course Corrections in India's FinTech Sector | 5 | 7 | 3 | 1 | The host notes that fintech founders face unpredictable regulatory shifts every quarter. Sharad agrees, characterizing the divergence from Raghuram Rajan's three-lane regulatory model as a domestic self-goal. | |
| Moving from 10 to 100: Codification and Global Positioning | 5 | 7 | 2 | 1 | The host queries why Indian tourists in Dubai must still use international card networks instead of UPI. Sharad explains the institutional failure in transitioning from '1 to 10' to '10 to 100' codification. | |
| Overcoming Ease of Doing Business Challenges in India | 4 | 7 | 3 | 0 | Sharad delivers an impassioned critique of India's Ease of Doing Business score (D-minus), noting that half of India's unicorns have flipped abroad due to compliance friction that deep tech startups cannot survive. | |
| Comparing Innovation Models: The US, China, and India | 4 | 8 | 4 | 1 | Sharad contrasts US, Chinese, and Indian innovation systems, criticizing Wall Street financialization and Big Tech gatekeeping in the US while praising China's fiercely Darwinian internal competition. | |
| Formulating India's AI Strategy and Picking Strategic Battles | 3 | 8 | 2 | 0 | Sharad details how India must triage its AI strategy, focusing on high-probability sovereign domains like oncology where proprietary registry data and non-HIPAA constraints offer domestic advantage. | |
| Democratizing AI Compute and Sovereign AI Assistants | 3 | 8 | 2 | 0 | Sharad reviews domestic compute subsidies and explains the need to construct corporate and academic Focused Research Organizations (FROs) to recruit top-tier diaspora talent across all four stages of the R&D talent tree. | |
| Unlocking Proprietary Data with DEPA and Differential Privacy | 2 | 9 | 1 | 0 | Sharad presents the technical architecture behind DEPA for AI training, explaining how differential privacy and hardware-based confidential compute prevent private data intermediaries from extracting outsized rents. | |
| Policy Considerations: Protecting Domestic Innovators in AI | 4 | 7 | 3 | 1 | Sharad admits to an unresolved internal debate within iSPIRT regarding whether future digital infrastructure should abandon 'color blindness' to protect domestic model builders from foreign tech monopolies. | |
| India's AI Regulatory Model: The AI Value Chain Framework | 3 | 8 | 2 | 0 | Sharad articulates the Indian complex adaptive framework for AI regulation, contrasting the European application-layer car test and the US foundation-model engine regulation with India's flexible AI value chain monitoring. | |
| Child Safety and Targeted Regulation at the Edges | 3 | 7 | 1 | 0 | Sharad discusses the moral imperative of child safety in Indian AI policy, advocating for age tokens that empower parents rather than state or institutional intermediaries. | |
| Transforming India's R&D Infrastructure and Capital Allocation | 5 | 7 | 2 | 0 | The host points out the leverage of repatriating top Indian AI researchers. Sharad details the policy backstory behind the government's 100,000 crore R&D fund allocation and the 5 essential pillars for deep tech. | |
| The Vigyanix Initiative: Empowering Sutradhars Across Generations | 4 | 8 | 1 | 0 | Sharad introduces Vigyanix, a structured initiative offering market-rate salaries to recruit ecosystem architects ('sutradhars') across power electronics, fabless chip design, and specialized AI compute. | |
| Strategic Autonomy in Action: Power Electronics, Solar, and Deep Tech | 4 | 7 | 2 | 1 | The host asks for clarification on 'power evacuation'. Sharad explains how massive solar plants in Rajasthan demand indigenous HVDC and 1-kVA rooftop power electronics to avert strategic reliance on Chinese components. | |
| Building a Product Nation: A Call to Action for Capital and Talent | 5 | 6 | 2 | 1 | The host probes whether sufficient risk capital exists to support deep tech autonomy and commits his platform to rally talent. Sharad concludes with a rallying cry for collective action across founders, capital, and policy. |
Statements from this episode (63)
Sharma: Tech Power Drives Economic and Military Dominance
“Today, you know, it's safe to say that if you have Economic power and military power, but no technology power. It doesn't count for a lot. And if you have technology power, you'll be able to accumulate the other two parts relatively easily.”
Sharma: India Risks Becoming a US Tech Colony and China Trade Colony
“The danger is that we would be a trade colony of China and a tech colony of the U S and we have to find our way out of this scenario.”
Sharma: Only 17% of Indians had a bank account in 2012
“To be able to do that we needed to make sure she has a bank account with 20 12. She didn't have a bank account. Only 17% of the people had a bank account.”
Sharma: Digital Primitives Must Be Data-Blind Public Utilities
“The fact that we could avoid monopolization and wrong kind of toll collecting because the primitives in our view should be public utilities data blind public utilities rather than anything else.”
Sharma: MOSIP identity platform spans 26 countries with 943M registered users
“Something like MOSIP, which is India's identity platform for the world, which is anchored in IIIT Bangalore is now in 26 countries. There are nine hundred and forty three million people signed up for it.”
Sharma: Account Aggregators have processed 140M consent transactions in India
“And you know, in those three or four months, we have cumulatively done roughly about hundred and forty million consent transactions. But in January alone, we did ten million transactions. So our run rate is one twenty million for this year alone.”
Sharma: India's Account Aggregator will hit 50M monthly transactions by December
“In a recent meeting that we had you know many people were convinced that we will end this year in December with a run rate of fifty million transactions. So I told them I'm coming to this podcast. Can I mention it there? They said, yes, you can. So I'm, you kn…”
Sharma: Term DPI First Originated In A 2022 Government Press Release
“In fact, the word DPI itself is, is relatively new, you know, as a term, it was used for the first time on September 1320, 22. In a press release that the government of India gave to announce what would be the focus areas for G-Twenty”
Sharma: Government Tech Is Only DPI If It Enables Private Innovation
“They think every open source project is a DPI. They think every government tech is DPI, which is not true. Some government tech is DPI. If it enables private entrepreneurship or private innovation to happen on type on top, some open sources DPI. And all DPI is…”
Sharma: Global Fast Payment Momentum Belongs to Brazil's PIX, Not UPI
“Today in the fast payment world, the momentum is not with UPI is with PIX. It's a Brazilian system, which is inspired by UPI as they say. And but they've done a very good job of the basics of taking it out.”
Sharma: No meaningful foreign country has adopted UPI domestically
“There is literally, literally no meaningful country which has adopted UPI as a domestic payment system. Within their country.”
Sharma: MOSIP contains no backdoor for India to control foreign deployments
“One of the promises that we make in MOSIP is that it is non-weaponizable. So if you implement the MOSIP system in your country, there is no backdoor that India will have that will allow India to control that system as you go forward.”
Sharma: Relying on Visa and Mastercard gives US government potential kill-switch control
“If you use a Visa MasterCard, the US government will potentially have strings that they can use to control one day, perhaps even shut the system down if needed.”
Sharma: Indian Overconfidence Caused UPI To Lag Brazil's PIX Globally
“And that required us to open up the protocol in a very structured way. We didn't do that. You know, we are doing that now. But Brazilians with Pix did that I think in July or August of and so we got a little cocky and overconfident about our own momentum in th…”
Sharma: India has established its first global standards organization
“India has created the first DS first global DSO from India.”
Sharma: Roughly $3B Will Be Spent On DPI Over Three Years
“We think there'll be roughly about you know, two to three billion dollars spent on the DPI ecosystem in the next three years.”
Sharma: India Risks Losing Its Tech Edge by Prematurely Abandoning Underdog Mindset
“We get a little bit of a chance. We go from being the underdog to the top dog, and we think everything is sorted out. And this is our problem even, even in DPI. And so it's very, very important that we maintain an underdog mindset.”
Ahluwalia: Sam Altman told Indian founders not to attempt competing with OpenAI
“Two years ago, Sam Altman came to India. Rajan and then asked him question, can a startup from India compete with open AI? He said, it's not possible. Don't even attempt it.”
Sharma: India launched the Chandrayaan mission for under $100 million
“We launched Chandrayaan for less than a hundred million dollars.”
Sharma: India's three-page net neutrality policy is taught in global law schools
“That three page policy that came is taught in many law schools across the world as a very well written policy, short, but well written policy.”
Sharma: Facebook Used Indian Policy To Defend US Net Neutrality
“And the same Facebook, which had insisted on removing net neutrality here was now defending net neutrality here using the three page policy that we had created to basically preserve our net neutrality.”
Sharma: TRAI must-carry rules made cable TV more expensive for consumers
“Now in India, cable television is Follows the must carry rule. It's good for the ecosystem, but not good for the consumer. You pay actually more for cable TV today than you were paying earlier, because that is how the system is set up.”
Sharma: SEBI Mutual Fund Rules Drove India's Retail Stock Market Boom
“And the fact that stock market is popped up is because lots of new money is coming in. And because that system provides clarity and good regulation of the mutual fund ecosystem in a way, very few countries do it today.”
Sharma: Indian OTAs are legally passenger agents obliged to show all flights
“So I don't know how many people in India know that when you buy a ticket from make my trip Yatra or clear trip or any of these place, they are passengers agents. So you pay a convenience fee. The airline doesn't pay them. And that means that when Akasa air as …”
Sharma: Line-Item Settlement Makes India's GST Revenues Hard To Evade
“GST revenues are very hard to fudge because we do the value chain kind of settlement, not on a monthly basis, not even on an invoice basis, but on a line item of an invoice basis.”
Sharma: Indian Monthly GST Collections Doubled To ₹2 Lakh Crore
“Every physical infrastructure that you see is a result of actually GST revenues growing so rapidly, you know, not too long back, there used to be only one lakh crores a month. Now there are two lakhs crores a month.”
Sharma: GST Liability Chain Architecture Will Be Vital For AI Regulation
“So we understand these tax liability chains now better than anything else. And that will be important for AI. We'll come back to AI a little later in AI regulation in a very big way.”
Sharma: India Handled Aadhaar Regulatory Philosophy Poorly Before Improving With UPI
“And we have we did a very poor job of that with Aadhaar, better job with UPI, better still with Depa.”
Sharma: Only 30 Percent Of Regulators Understand DPI Concepts
“If I take a hundred regulators, I would say only about 20, 30 of them have a good understanding of this. Another 20, 30 have heard of it, but they don't have a very good understanding and 20, 30 have not even heard of it.”
Sharma: Indian fintech struggles because stakeholders abandoned the three-lane regulatory framework
“Part of our pain in the fintech system is that neither the fintechs nor the banks, unregulated, regulated, and the regulator have remained true to this three lane model while everybody says this is the right model.”
Sharma: Relying On Visa And Mastercard Means A 1% Foreign Tax
“The fact is that when your economy is reliant on Visa MasterCard, you're paying a one person tax to a third country, right?”
Sharma: Vietnam announced a 20 percent cut in regulatory staffing
“And I came back and next week they announced a 20% cut in the number of people involved in regulation so that they can be competitive, you know, with the rest of the world.”
Sharma: Around 50 of India's 120 unicorns are domiciled abroad
“Probably 50 of our 120 unicorns are technically not Indian, right?”
Sharma: India Gets An A In Tech But D-Minus In Business
“We do well with the technology architecture, you know, protocols and platforms and how to think about them. I would say we get an A there. We do pretty poorly B minus for the regulatory architecture on top of that. We do our ecosystem building organizations, w…”
Sharma: Antitrust Action Against Internet Explorer Enabled Google And Facebook
“So about 23 years ago, had they not challenged the monopoly of Internet Explorer,
I can tell you Google would not be an important company it is today.
You know, you won't have had Facebook as an independent company that you have today.
You know, even the curre…”
Sharma: US Big Tech Organized Efforts To Erect AI Entry Barriers
“Big tech had a well known, although they won't admit it, but the fact is that they had an organized effort to restrict AI.
To their own set of people.
They said, let's erect entry barriers so that , right?
This is they will never accept it, but this was a real…”
Sharma: India's CSIR Is Defunct And Academic Research Is A Hobby
“That doesn't happen today, because CSIR, I'm sorry to be so blunt, is defunct.
Our academic research is mostly hobby research, and so we have a problem.
We don't have the research infrastructure.”
Sharma: India Lacks An Aligned National Game Plan For AI
“Now your question is, do we have a game plan like that for AI, right?
And is it understood by all the three stakeholders?
And the short answer is not yet.
We don't have a game plan.
We know some elements of the game plan but we don't
We know those elements are…”
Sharma: Strict HIPAA Regulations Will Hinder US Healthcare AI Startups
“Furthermore, this is one place where there is Difficult regulation called HIPAA in the US that will prevent US startups being able to do well.”
Sharma: Indian Startups Will Struggle Against Incumbents Like Salesforce In AI
“Similarly, I would say in many corporate use cases you know, will we be able to win? I don't think so. For example Salesforce has got such a lock in on customer facing kind of corporate use cases. And since our way of thinking about those use cases is more or …”
Sharma: India Has Line Of Sight To 18,000 GPUs For AI
“We already have a line of sight to 18,000 GPUs if we need”
Sharma: India Currently Has Zero Industrial AI Research Labs
“Right now, we don't have an industrial lab here at all.”
Sharma: Reliance And Tata Leaders Aim To Launch Industrial AI Labs
“Our big companies like Reliance you know, our leaders there are very interested in doing that. You know, in Tata's, they're very interested in doing that and others, and I'm hoping that they'll make the right big moves to create these kinds of industrial labs.”
Sharma: For-Profit Data Intermediaries Will Drain Value from Data Creators
“But what will happen is that if these companies are profit maximizing entities, they will suck the value away from the edges, because if you, on the other hand, make them a public utility, Then the value is either with the person who had the data, the hospital…”
Sharma: DEPA Closed Pilots Are Running in India, Japan, and France
“And this is now in the zero to one stage where there are closed pilots taking place and not just in India, but now in, in, in Japan and France as well.”
Sharma: India Should Give Preferential Treatment To Domestic AI Builders
“Now, of course, this means that we should give some preferential treatment to Indian model builders over other model builders.”
Sharma: India's AI data infrastructure will finish zero-to-one phase by year-end
“By end of this year, we'll have a fully finished zero to one transition.”
Sharma: Major Tech Companies Will Announce Global DEPA Adoption Soon
“And some of them are going to announce in the coming months that they will follow our system. DEPA on a global basis, even in jurisdictions that don't require them to follow.”
Sharma: European AI regulation focuses on third-party application testing
“In Europe, they said, We must regulate the app. App for them is like a car. Yeah. So they say we'll not put a car on the road until it is safe for its occupants. And we can't trust the car maker to do the testing to determine whether it's safe for the occupant…”
Sharma: US AI regulation focuses on foundation models over apps
“The US, which has tried to control AI and its dissipation you know, Sam Altman's statement was just a manifestation of that. And the GPU diffusion order is a manifestation of that said, look, ultimately all these apps will have only a few models. Oh, you know,…”
Sharma: India treats AI regulation as an adaptable multi-layer framework
“Our view in India is that we don't know how the ecosystem will evolve. There's a lot of unpredictability. Therefore, we must think of it as a complex adaptive system and retain the right to intervene wherever it makes sense. For some years, it may make sense t…”
Sharma: India Had 23M Births Last Year Versus China's 9M
“India had twenty three million babies or so last year, right? And China had nine million.”
Sharma: AI Child Safety Must Empower Parents, Not The State
“So we have to take some agency away from the children and give it to the parents, because if you were in the West, we would give it to the teachers. If you were in China, we'd give it to the state, you know, but in India, we have to give it to the parents.”
Sharma: Regulating Data And Distribution Allows For Liberal AI Application Layers
“By looking at the bookends on the distribution side and at the data side, We may allow for a fairly liberal system in the middle.”
Sharma: India's AI Framework Will Coalesce Within Five Months
“I think we are still four or five months away before all this will coalesce into a common form.”
Sharma: Reasonably confident India will build industrial labs for returning AI talent
“The problem that we have is we don't have landing spots for them. And we have to therefore create the industrial labs. And you know, if I was to signal to people, I'm reasonably confident that will happen.”
Sharma: Private Proposal Led To Government's ₹100,000 Crore R&D Allocation
“We went and said, look, so much experiment that has happened with philanthropic capital has to move into public capital, and perhaps we need to allocate 10,000 crores. Then we were told that's too little. It should be. So we said, okay, 25,000 crores is what y…”
Sharma: India Has 5 Years To Avoid Remaining A Services Nation
“This is next few years, our make or break off for India, because as the supply chains are up in the air, We can find our place in this world, you know, by dominating some parts of the supply chain. If we don't do this in the next four or five years, you know, …”
Sharma: Deep-Tech Ecosystem Orchestrators Cannot Be In Their Twenties
“First of all, you can't be a sutradhar in your twenties. It's very difficult, right? Because you have to deal with complex things. You have to draw many stakeholders together, right? You got to take a whole of nation approach. So you got to be in your mid fort…”
Sharma: Vigyanix Is Piloting Market-Rate Orchestrators In Deep-Tech Domains
“We're trying it out only in three areas right now. And those three areas are power electronics, AI compute, a narrow version of that, and to do with fabulous design. And we're going to experiment, try to get some Sutradhars who are in this category, who are no…”
Sharma: India's Solar Mission Targets 10,000 Daily Installations Shortly
“India is rolling out, you know, one of prime minister's pet project is this rooftop solar. And you know, the way this is designed You know, the goal is to get to 10,000 installations a day. You know, and they have, he's handpicked people to do that, and I know…”