saas startups in india: DaaS catches on as nations focus on digital public infra

As world leaders increasingly recognise the importance of digital public infrastructure in diplomacy, statecraft and development, a group of technologists is proposing digital public infrastructure (DPI)-as-a-service model for faster adoption of digital public goods (DPGs), especially in countries with a population of less than 1 million.

They are encouraging DPG owners in India, and anyone around the world who has open-sourced a DPG to package their offering and make it cloud-ready for any country or organisation, to use as a “plug and play”.

Several open-source components and building blocks exist today, like MOSIP, a modular identity platform; Mojaloop, a software that lowers the cost to build an instant payment system; and OpenCRVS, a civil registration software, among others.

“An island nation (for example) should be able to literally subscribe, turn on and configure it to its needs, instead of custom-building from scratch,” said Pramod Varma, technology architect behind projects such as Aadhaar, UPI, DigiLocker and e-Sign.

He said, “MOSIP team and eGov Foundation have expressed interest in this concept ahead of time, along with a few other global DPG owners. We will see many DaaS offers coming up in March, April, and May from the open-source community.”

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Generally, DPI rollouts are a long-drawn process of 24 or 36 months for countries because of processes like request-for-proposal, selecting bids, vendors, buying computers and software to get a sandbox going, which makes it capex-intensive.Varma questioned if this can be brought down to three to six months.

“We can do faster DPI rollouts if we package all aspects of it as a pre-packaged product,” he said.

Packaging the software, templates, rollout policies, and project plans, with some customisation by countries is the focus of DaaS.

“We’re essentially taking open-source DPGs or software, packaging them like a product, with an ecosystem that is trained and certified with a set of templates for policies and project management, and saying with this package a country should be able to roll this out in three to six months easily compared to 12 to 24 months,” Varma said.

The package depends on the needs of a particular nation. If an island nation, for example, needs a solution like Indian IT ministry’s credentialing stack DigiLocker, or a payment solution, or a solution for education, or healthcare, they should be able to access an ecosystem of open-source pre-built product packages via the DaaS model to fast track its implementation.

Varma clarified that this model has no connection with the export of India Stack. Whenever India’s DPIs like DigiLocker and Unified Payments Interface are available in the open source, they can be offered under the DaaS model, he said.

A working paper titled ‘The Future of Digital Public Infrastructure: A Thesis for Rapid Global Adoption’ was published recently by public policy think tank Carnegie India. It presents an alternative approach to DPI deployment — as a packaged solution.

Authored by Pramod Varma, Rahul Matthan, Rudra Chaudhuri and CV Madhukar, it is a new way to think about rolling out solutions at scale and speed, they say.

As world leaders increasingly recognise the importance of digital public infrastructure in diplomacy, statecraft and development, a group of technologists is proposing digital public infrastructure (DPI)-as-a-service model for faster adoption of digital public goods (DPGs), especially in countries with a population of less than 1 million.

They are encouraging DPG owners in India, and anyone around the world who has open-sourced a DPG to package their offering and make it cloud-ready for any country or organisation, to use as a “plug and play”.

Several open-source components and building blocks exist today, like MOSIP, a modular identity platform; Mojaloop, a software that lowers the cost to build an instant payment system; and OpenCRVS, a civil registration software, among others.

“An island nation (for example) should be able to literally subscribe, turn on and configure it to its needs, instead of custom-building from scratch,” said Pramod Varma, technology architect behind projects such as Aadhaar, UPI, DigiLocker and e-Sign.

He said, “MOSIP team and eGov Foundation have expressed interest in this concept ahead of time, along with a few other global DPG owners. We will see many DaaS offers coming up in March, April, and May from the open-source community.”

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Generally, DPI rollouts are a long-drawn process of 24 or 36 months for countries because of processes like request-for-proposal, selecting bids, vendors, buying computers and software to get a sandbox going, which makes it capex-intensive.Varma questioned if this can be brought down to three to six months.

“We can do faster DPI rollouts if we package all aspects of it as a pre-packaged product,” he said.

Packaging the software, templates, rollout policies, and project plans, with some customisation by countries is the focus of DaaS.

“We’re essentially taking open-source DPGs or software, packaging them like a product, with an ecosystem that is trained and certified with a set of templates for policies and project management, and saying with this package a country should be able to roll this out in three to six months easily compared to 12 to 24 months,” Varma said.

The package depends on the needs of a particular nation. If an island nation, for example, needs a solution like Indian IT ministry’s credentialing stack DigiLocker, or a payment solution, or a solution for education, or healthcare, they should be able to access an ecosystem of open-source pre-built product packages via the DaaS model to fast track its implementation.

Varma clarified that this model has no connection with the export of India Stack. Whenever India’s DPIs like DigiLocker and Unified Payments Interface are available in the open source, they can be offered under the DaaS model, he said.

A working paper titled ‘The Future of Digital Public Infrastructure: A Thesis for Rapid Global Adoption’ was published recently by public policy think tank Carnegie India. It presents an alternative approach to DPI deployment — as a packaged solution.

Authored by Pramod Varma, Rahul Matthan, Rudra Chaudhuri and CV Madhukar, it is a new way to think about rolling out solutions at scale and speed, they say.