After G20 consensus, Google to export India’s digital public infrastructure

Google is deepening its commitment to India with an ambitious plan to export the country’s digital public infrastructure (DPI) globally. 

At its Google for India keynote on Thursday, the tech giant unveiled ‘DPI in a box’—a ready-made solution for governments looking to replicate India’s successful digital identity framework. Built on the Google Cloud platform, the solution offers a comprehensive suite for identity storage, management, and access, designed for easy global integration.

The DPI solution, which allows other nations to implement Aadhaar-like frameworks using a standardized tech stack, is being developed in collaboration with the Nandan Nilekani-backed EkStep Foundation and digital governance firm Protean Technologies Ltd. 

To be sure, Google’s DPI offerings do not include the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) technology stack. 

Three senior industry executives confirmed that four African nations are currently in talks with Google, along with multiple top multinational consultancy firms, to understand how the implementation of DPIs can be undertaken.

Additionally, Google announced the localization of its Gemini 1.5 Flash large language model (LLM), described as the company’s “fastest, most cost-efficient multimodal model for high-frequency tasks.” Storing the core model in India aims to reduce latency for on-cloud AI (artificial intelligence) access and better serve industries with data localization needs, such as financial services.

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“We are in India for the long run, and a key part of our goal is to bring new features and services to India in line with our global expansion standards," said Bikram Bedi, vice-president and managing director-India at Google Cloud. “The DPI project, for instance, will be conducted in partnership with the public sectors of various nations—and while there is a commercial aspect involved for Google’s cloud operations here, the key bit here is that we’re keen on partnering with India through its increasing geopolitical importance and leadership, not just in the global South, but around the world.”

Global adoption and AI push

This push for global DPI adoption follows the G20 consensus reached last year, which identified India’s DPI as a secure and interoperable standard that could be implemented globally across payments, healthcare, and identification.

Jayanth Kolla, cofounder and partner at technology consultancy firm Convergence Catalyst, said, “The DPI in a box offering is Google’s own push to be a part of India’s tech ecosystem’s growth. After the success of UPI, and the rise of open networks such as ONDC as well as India’s health stack, it is clear that these technologies will scale up massively. In some ways, India’s DPI ambitions are in the same tune as China’s Belt and Road initiative. India’s DPI adoption is a three-week process for any adopter, and this ease is prompting tech companies such as Google to capture a pie of this global growth for the service.”

The DPI model allows governments to implement a “plug-and-play” approach to digitizing their national identity infrastructure, Bedi told Mint in a interview.

Google’s partnership with Protean Technologies and EkStep Foundation represents one of the first efforts since the G20 agreement. Bedi emphasized that “product creation” is key to the initiative.

“Different nations have different requirements—some are working on public cloud services built on cloud platforms. Others are also considering sovereign cloud, where air-gapped cloud infrastructures work within a nation’s bounds. A lot of work has already been done in these areas, and the next area that we’re working on is go-to market strategies. The EkStep Foundation will field queries on DPI adoption, as will Google’s partners and existing customers around the world," he said.

Protean Technologies, citing a silent period ahead of its quarterly earnings, refrained from commenting. Queries sent to EkStep Foundation were not answered till press time.

“The localization of the AI model is a welcome and natural move by Google, although the real big challenge is to wait and see if the Gemini 1.5 family really finds India-based generative AI use cases," Kolla said. This is because this model was trained with English language nuances, leaving them behind competitors that have integrated local languages from scratch, he said.

“It’s also important to note that Microsoft has a more dominant position among Big Tech companies’ influence in India—this move can help Google claw into this influence,” he added.

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During Thursday’s Google for India keynote, the tech giant also introduced open-source AI agents designed for businesses across various sectors. These domain-specific AI interfaces offer deep expertise tailored to individual industries. Google further expanded its generative AI assistant platform, Gemini, by adding support for nine Indian languages and four languages for ‘AI Overviews,’ a key feature on Google Search.

Prashant Kumar Singhal, partner and India leader, telecom at consultancy firm EY India, said, “The adoption of DPIs from India will be led by emerging economies—specifically, the African and Caribbean nations. Nations such as the US, Australia and the EU already have their own identity stacks—that won’t be disrupted. For any technology service provider, the commercial benefits will come from the annuity of their cloud platform, which in the long run, and with multiple nations put together, is a sizeable revenue opportunity.”

In addition to its AI advancements, Google’s ‘Pay’ division announced a partnership with Kerala-based Muthoot Finance to enable gold loans through its Google Pay app. The company is also collaborating with the Centre’s National Health Authority to integrate Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) identification documents into its Wallet app.

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As part of its commitment to sustainability, Google revealed plans to source 186MW of green energy annually from local providers CleanMax and Adani Group, aligning with its global decarbonization goals.