India Stack 2.0: What Comes After UPI and Aadhaar

When historians write about India's digital transformation in the early 21st century, they will likely point to two achievements as transformational: Aadhaar, the world's largest biometric identity programme, and UPI, the world's most successful digital payments system by transaction volume. Together, these formed the first layer of what technologists call the India Stack, a set of open digital infrastructure layers that enable services to be built at the scale and uniqueness of India's population.

That first stack was about identity and money. India Stack 2.0 is about data, health, commerce, and credentials. It is the next layer of public digital infrastructure, and it will shape India's digital economy for the next decade as profoundly as Aadhaar and UPI shaped the last one.

India Stack is the collective term for the open API infrastructure developed by the Indian government and associated organisations, enabling digital services to reach the entire Indian population. The first generation had four layers:

Presence-less layer: Aadhaar, enabling identity verification without physical documents or in-person visits. A fingerprint or iris scan became sufficient to prove identity.

Paperless layer: DigiLocker, enabling citizens to store and share government-issued documents digitally. Educational certificates, driving licences, vehicle registration, insurance policies, all accessible as verified digital documents.

Cashless layer: UPI and associated payment infrastructure, enabling instant, realtime money transfer between any two bank accounts through any UPI app, using a simple VPA (Virtual Payment Address).

Consent layer (emerging): The Account Aggregator framework, enabling citizens to share their financial data with third parties through a consent-governed API, giving users control over their financial information.

Together, these layers enabled an explosion of fintech, edtech, and govtech innovation that would not have been possible without this shared infrastructure foundation.

The second generation of India Stack is defined by several major initiatives:

1. Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), The Health Data Layer ABDM is creating a unified digital health ecosystem for India:

• 01Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA): A unique health identifier for every Indian citizen, similar to what Aadhaar is for identity. The ABHA number links all health records, from hospitals, labs, pharmacies, and insurers, to a single health profile.
• 02Health Information Exchange: A network of Health Information Providers (HIPs) and Health Information Users (HIUs) that can share patient records through a standardised, consent-governed API. A patient can share their diagnostic report from hospital A with specialist doctor B with a few taps on their phone.
• 03National Health Claims Exchange: An interoperable infrastructure for health insurance claims, reducing the paperwork, delays, and fraud that characterise current insurance claim processing.

The ABDM's consent architecture mirrors the Account Aggregator model, patients control who sees their health records, for what purpose, and for how long. This places India at the frontier of patient-controlled health data systems globally.

2. Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), The Commerce Layer ONDC is India's attempt to democratise e-commerce by creating open protocol-based infrastructure that any seller or buyer can plug into, rather than depending on proprietary platform networks.

The vision: a customer on any ONDC-compatible app can discover and purchase products from any seller on any other ONDC-compatible platform. The buyer and seller do not need to be on the same platform. The network connects them through open protocols.

This is the UPI equivalent for commerce, the same interoperability that allowed any bank account to send money to any other bank account, applied to buyers and sellers. (Detailed in the companion post on ONDC.) 3. DigiYatra, The Travel Identity Layer DigiYatra is a biometric boarding system for Indian airports, enabling passengers to check in and board using facial recognition linked to their Aadhaar identity, eliminating physical boarding passes.

This extends the identity layer into physical travel infrastructure, a preview of how digital identity will increasingly govern access to physical services and spaces.

4. Academic Bank of Credits (ABC), The Education Credential Layer The National Education Policy 2020 mandates an Academic Bank of Credits, a national registry where academic credits earned by students across institutions can be stored, shared, and transferred. Students can accumulate credits from multiple institutions and have them recognised by others.

This creates portable academic credentials, an individual's learning history becomes a digital asset they own and control, shareable with institutions or employers through verified APIs.

5. Unified Logistics Interface Platform (ULIP), The Logistics Layer ULIP is a government initiative to create interoperable digital infrastructure for India's logistics sector, connecting multiple systems (customs, port operations, freight tracking, toll systems) through a single API layer, reducing transaction costs and improving visibility across supply chains.

For a country with a complex, fragmented logistics ecosystem, ULIP represents the application of the India Stack model to physical goods movement.

The Account Aggregator (AA) framework deserves special attention as the connective tissue of India Stack 2.0. Initially focused on financial data, the AA model is being extended to cover health data (through ABDM), potentially education and employment data (through emerging frameworks), and other categories.

The AA is an institution type, registered with RBI, SEBI, IRDAI, or equivalent, that sits between data providers and data consumers, managing consent and data flow on behalf of the individual. It creates a uniform consent infrastructure across domains.

The implications: as more data categories are brought within the AA or ABDM consent frameworks, India will have arguably the world's most comprehensive individual data portability infrastructure, enabling citizens to share their health records, financial history, educational credentials, and more with service providers of their choice, under their own consent.

India Stack 2.0 is not just technical infrastructure, it is consent infrastructure. The AA framework, the ABDM consent architecture, and the DPDP Act's Consent Manager concept are all expressions of the same principle: individuals should control how their data flows, with transparent mechanisms to grant, manage, and revoke consent.

The DPDP Act's Consent Manager is the horizontal layer that sits above all the vertical consent mechanisms, AA for finance, ABDM for health, potentially others for education and employment. It provides a unified interface through which data principals can manage all their consents across all domains.

For technology companies building on India Stack 2.0, the consent architecture is not an afterthought, it is a design requirement. Every service that accesses individual data through India Stack APIs must participate in the consent framework, with clear notices, specific purposes, and reliable withdrawal mechanisms.

India Stack is increasingly recognised internationally as a model for public digital infrastructure. Countries in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America are studying India's approach and considering how to adapt it to their contexts.

the India Stack model as a potential framework for developing nations seeking to build digital financial and health infrastructure at scale, without being dependent on proprietary platform solutions.

The idea, that a government can provide open, interoperable digital infrastructure that enables a diverse ecosystem of private innovators, is powerful and increasingly influential. India's execution has been imperfect and uneven, but the model is demonstrably more effective than waiting for markets alone to solve the infrastructure problem.

India Stack 2.0 creates significant opportunities for technology companies that can build compelling services on top of this infrastructure:

• 01Healthtech: ABDM integration enables health services that were previously impossible, integrated health records across providers, AI-driven diagnostic assistance with access to complete patient histories, seamless insurance claims.
• 02EdTech: Academic Bank of Credits integration enables credential management, alumni networks, and employer access to verified educational records.
• 03Fintech: The continued evolution of UPI, the AA framework, and the National Payments Infrastructure creates ongoing opportunities for innovation in payments, credit, investment, and insurance.
• 04Regtech and compliance: The consent infrastructure that underlies India Stack 2.0 creates opportunities for compliance technology that helps organisations manage their obligations within these frameworks.

At ASCENRA Technologies, we are building at the intersection of India Stack 2.0 and the DPDP Act, recognising that the consent infrastructure of the digital economy is both the regulatory requirement and the competitive opportunity of the decade.

Note: This article is for informational purposes only. Government initiatives and technology capabilities described are evolving; specific details may have changed since publication.