Scale of digital public infrastructure staggering, pandemic years strengthened outlook around digital economy: UIDAI CEO

The pandemic years strengthened people’s awareness about the significance of digital economy, Saurabh Garg, Chief Executive Officer of Aadhaar-issuing body UIDAI said on Friday.

The numbers and scale of digital public infrastructure today, are “staggering”, Garg said speaking at IPCIDE annual conference ‘State of India’s Digital Economy’. For Aadhaar, between 2019 to 2022, the number of authentications doubled, he said. “When you consider any of the digital public infrastructure Aadhaar obviously being the foundational ID and therefore being basic to many of the others…We’ve seen between 2019 to 2022, a 100 per cent increase in the number of authentications that has been done, we’ve doubled it. And we reached a stage that we’re doing around 70 to 80 million transactions per day,” Garg said.

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The growth underscores the point that growth of digital economy is “so much more faster”. And with focus now on larger growth for the entire economy, the digital piece will become even more relevant. “I think the last three years of the pandemic, have only strengthened the awareness among everyone of what the digital economy can help and how it can be so much more useful going ahead,” said the top executive of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).