Kicking off our "Been There, Done That" Series with the Chief Architect of the India Stack, Pramod Varma. In this multi-part tête-à-tête with him, we naturally begin with what started it all - Aadhaar. Rather than get into complex descriptions, we thought we will just leave you with some facts:

• Trust - 90% of people trust that their data are safe in the Aadhaar system and 61% of welfare beneficiaries trust that Aadhaar prevents others from accessing their benefits
• Inclusion - 49% of people used Aadhaar to access one or more services for the very first time (e.g., ration, MGNREGS, social pensions, SIM cards, and/or bank accounts). For 8% of people, Aadhaar was their first ID ever
• Service Delivery - 80% of beneficiaries feel Aadhaar has made PDS rations, MGNREGS and social pensions more reliable. Using Aadhaar, residents were 40% more likely to obtain a new SIM card within one day, compared to using other forms of ID
• e-KYC - The World Bank estimates that Aadhaar brought down the customer onboarding cost for an Indian bank from $23 to just $0.15

Just remember, 100 million people is considered to be a decent pilot in India 😉.

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