Pramod Varma has been the chief architect of most of India’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) efforts starting with Aadhaar - India’s unique ID system that covers 1.4 Billion people; eSign - an interoperable digital signature protocol; DigiLocker - digital credentialing and wallet system in India which is currently used by 280 million people having nearly 6.5 billion credentials; and UPI - the unified real time payment system that was launched in 2016 currently doing over 14 Billion transactions a month.
He also played a key role in designing and architecting India’s indirect tax (GST) system, digital health infrastructure, digital agri infrastructure, and digital education infrastructure.
In addition, he co-founded and created Beckn Protocol, an open source protocol effort that helps create decentralized, peer-peer transaction networks. Beckn protocol is the basis for India’s new efforts such as ONDC (decentralized commerce), Namma Yatri (decentralized mobility), and the newly live decentralized energy network (UEI). Beckn Protocol is also being adopted for various efforts in Europe, Brazil, Africa, US, and other parts of the world.
He contributed to the Finternet vision and co-authored the Finternet architecture paper. This vision imagines a user centric, universal, and unified infrastructure for any real world or digital asset tokenization that will enable billions of people to participate in the global financial system.
He is also the co-chair at the global Center for DPI (CDPI), and an advisor to many entities and initiatives in India and globally.
He holds a Master’s and Ph.D. degree in Computer Science along with a second Master’s in Applied Mathematics. He is passionate about technology, science, society, and teaching.
