ProductNation/iSPIRT

#DEPA is not a departure from citizen empowerment. It is its next evolution. As #AI transforms the value of data, we must move beyond treating individual consent as the sole instrument of empowerment and build architectures that enable privacy-preserving data collaboration, collective participation and equitable value creation. DEPA for AI Training brings together established technologies and institutional frameworks to make this possible—extending data empowerment from individual data sharing to collective intelligence. The ambition is clear: move from data governance to the governance of intelligence. Read our latest piece on why DEPA matters for the future of the AI economy: pn.ispirt.in/reimagining-dat… @sharads, @RajShekhar004, @harshitkacholia, Sunu Engineer

India’s #AI leadership will be determined not only by the models it builds, but also by whether it controls the infrastructure governing the data those models learn from. Our new blog explores why data sovereignty must be built into the architecture of AI — moving beyond contractual assurances and data residency towards enforceable, verifiable safeguards. India’s #DEPA Private AI Training and Inferencing frameworks offer a techno-legal approach to operationalising this vision, enabling institutions to unlock the value of their data without surrendering control. The infrastructure has been built. The imperative now is to operationalise it — particularly for the government, given the sensitive citizen information, confidential administrative records, and data of strategic importance to national security and sovereign interests that public institutions steward. Read the blog: pn.ispirt.in/indias-ai-leade…

UPI handles 15B+ transactions a month. Every API that enables interoperability is also an attack surface. The CISO of 2030 must secure the full AI lifecycle, and can’t be hired in 2029. Full piece: pn.ispirt.in/the-ciso-of-203… #CISO2030 #CyberSecurityIndia @rinka_singh, @gelchuri, @theshantanuk

OCEN's quarterly performance reflects growing momentum. Loan disbursements have increased from 5,641 loans worth ₹197.95 crore in Q1 2025 to 41,712 loans worth ₹1,401.91 crore in Q3 2026. OCEN is not a lender; it is an ecosystem builder. The next chapter of MSME finance will be built through collaboration. OCEN provides the rails; lenders, LSPs and technology partners can turn them into meaningful credit access for millions of businesses. Read the complete report: pn.ispirt.in/ocen-quarterly-… @sharads @parikh_sagar @aaRBee16 @OCEN @GeM_India @sidbiofficial Shresth Vats @GetVantage_Co @TheOfficialSBI @121finance Lanfinance.ai @IDBI_Bank @pnbindia @OPLinnovate @Perfios @finarkein

Every era of AI has been shaped by what it learns from. The next era will learn from real-world outcomes. Outcomes that are longitudinal, spread across institutions, and live. What happened to the patient, the loan, the crop, over years and across institutions. Institutions hold those outcomes today, and AI working inside hospitals and banks will generate more. India should set the rules for how models learn from both. @neelkanthmishra highlights how India’s #DEPA offers a remarkable response to do this. teapaw.org/ANI/status/21081060799…

The Export Declaration Form (EDF) backlash is a symptom of a bigger problem: regulatory silos. RBI regulates under FEMA. GST under GST law. Banks operate under their own systems. The answer is not less regulation. It is connected regulation: One transaction → One digital declaration → Multiple authorised government regulators and departments. The EDF can become the starting point for a Digital EDF that connects RBI, GST, banks, and other relevant systems. Whole-of-government must begin when regulation is designed—not after the regulation is issued. pn.ispirt.in/the-edf-backlas…

Manufacturing was the 1st step. India is already building Foxconn-type companies, and 99% of phones Indians use are already made in India. @getpeid's CMF spin-out is step 2: own the R&D, not the badge. At iSPIRT and in our Vishvamitra initiative, for many years we have highlighted the importance of IP ownership over manufacturing. In the modern Product development process, manufacturing comes at the tail end of the process, as @tarunmehta has also highlighted many times. The Government should assume this as the default while making the policy.

From Digital Identity to Digital Trust. As India moves toward DPI 2.0, IDIF explores a decentralised trust layer built around verifiable credentials, selective disclosure, cryptographic proofs and cross-border interoperability — with less dependence on central databases and APIs. A key building block for the next generation of DPI. Read: pn.ispirt.in/from-digital-id… @GoI_MeitY @RBI @NITIAayog #DPI #DPI2 #DigitalTrust #DigitalIdentity #iSPIRT

In 2023, @RajivKumar1, @svembu and @sharads signed an open letter "India and AI: Need for Urgent National and International Debate." This week @DarioAmodei published "We Must Pace the Frontier." Altman and Musk agreed within hours. The debate has arrived. Our 2023 concern was precise: technological progress is inexorable and largely beneficial — but *adopting* AI without essential due diligence and appropriate safeguards can disrupt the social order at scale. Note the verb. Adopting. That is deployment. That distinction still matters. The labs are converging on pacing *development* — slower capability gains, evaluated by parties they invite in themselves. Useful. Insufficient. And conveniently, the one lever that costs everyone outside the frontier labs the most. The sharper risk isn't only how fast capability is built. It's how little stands between a training run and a billion users. That gap is now weeks. Independent oversight belongs precisely there — between frontier development and deployment. And oversight cannot rest on a pledge. Pledges are revocable and self-scored. It has to be enforceable in architecture: verifiable evaluation, auditable AI chains, accredited actors, technical guarantees. India has been building exactly this. Techno-legal, not just legal. Last point. Three CEOs agreeing on a Saturday afternoon is not global governance. Most of the world's AI users live outside the countries drafting these rules. India and the global majority have to be in the room — not briefed afterwards. Our 2023 letter is here. It reads better today than we would have liked. change.org/p/india-and-ai-ne…

@rssharma3 writes a well-timed piece on why #UPI must be kept #free and where the funding from it can come without hurting the consumers and the ecosystem. The bulk of UPI’s transactions are below ₹500 and these are towards auto fare, the Kirana store & vegetable seller. “A charge here is not a charge on commerce in the abstract; it is a levy on the smallest transactions of the poor.” Read the complete piece here: indianexpress.com/article/op…

India needs to focus on building ecosystems, not just companies. In China, Xiaomi can produce a world-class EV from scratch in 18 months due to the thriving ecosystem of EV manufacturing. In AI also, China is focusing on ecosystems and winning over American AI. For India to become an economic Vishwaguru, building ecosystems is key.

What happens when trust in Digital Infrastructure collapses? What are the takeaways for stakeholders concerned? Read this piece from our SAKRAM room to find these answers: pn.ispirt.in/aiims-delhi-and… #cybersecurity #digitalmedia #databreach

With the pricing debate around UPI, it is pertinent to clarify the initial design objectives. UPI was always meant to be a protocol - a public good that carried a private industry on its back. @sharads writes about the pitfall of ignoring the economic value that UPI brings & why the belief that a cut of every transaction is the only way to fund UPI is flawed. #UPI #public #public_good #MDR #consumers #DPI Read: financialexpress.com/opinion…

The proof of a deep-tech fund is in its outcomes. Were undeserving ventures funded? Were deserving ones turned away? CEA V. Anantha Nageswaran pushes for auditing innovation on impact and what was knowable then, not playing safe with hindsight paranoia. #DeepTech #Policy #IndianEconomy #PublicPolicy

@AnandaramSanjay writes for @natstrat_org on the importance of strategic persuasion for India. Strategic Persuasion is about pragmatic economic statecraft that advances a country’s strategic interests internationally in a non hegemonic manner. “India, as a four-trillion-dollar economy with aspirations to become a developed country by 2047, cannot be reactive or merely respond to the fast-changing global situation. It needs to strategically persuade others while setting the agenda in areas it has pioneered globally, such as Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI)..” Through MOSIP - the world’s largest deployment of DPIs for countries, India has already shown prowess in this endeavour. By making our DPIs our arrowheads, we should continue on the path of strategic persuasion. Read @: natstrat.org/articledetail/p… #DPI #MOSIP #StrategicAutonomy #strategic_persuasion

What if the biggest barrier to ease of doing business isn't just over-regulation, but regulatory cholesterol as well? The invisible friction created by disconnected regulatory systems slows businesses, increases compliance costs, & reduces predictability. Our latest blog explores how connected systems, not consolidated systems, can help eliminate this friction while preserving regulatory autonomy. pn.ispirt.in/alternate-way-o… @Sudhirzsingh @sharads @narendramodi @PMOIndia @NITIAayog @PiyushGoyal @cabsect_india @FinMinIndia @nsitharaman @TanuviT & Amit Jain #MSME #EoDB #Regulation #ConnectedSystems #compliance #DPI

How does India avoid the trap of “Digital Colonisation” and overcome geopolitics in cross-border trade? We need to break the silos in trade. Intuitively, what is digital must ultimately be governed through digital means. Cross-border trade governance can no longer remain trapped in regulatory silos in the data-driven Al era.   Hence we need to use our prowess in DPI, connect all trade administration systems in to one single DPI driven framework, that removes Silos and provide both an ease of business as well as empower smart policy making on trade to get best out of our cross border trade. Read the complete piece at: financialexpress.com/opinion… @narendramodi , @nsitharaman , @PiyushGoyal , @NITIAayog , @cabsect_india , @sharads , @Sudhirzsingh , Amit Jain, @TanuviT

India was the world’s back office. Now it wants to build the products the world runs on. #Semiconductors. #AI. #Telecom. #Drones. #Deeptech Not just services. Not just consumption. Ownership. IP. Manufacturing. Platforms. A #product_nation mindset changes everything: → better jobs → stronger supply chains → global leverage → technological sovereignty The next Indian decade will be powered by #Indian products. @AshwiniVaishnaw Ji's interview with The Week captures this path very lucidly. theweek.in/theweek/cover/202…

Whether you’re running an IT services company, a financial institution, a manufacturing unit, or a startup, your business runs on digital infrastructure, and #cybersecurity is at the core of operations. At iSPIRT, SAKRAM is our proposed solution to comprehensively deal with cybersecurity threats. Over the coming weeks, we will be publishing a dedicated series of blogs (and videos) that unpack SAKRAM in depth: what it is, how it works, and how your organization can put it into practice. Read our first blog @ pn.ispirt.in/sakram-a-practi… @rinka_singh @gelchuri @sharads @KesavaReddy #cybersecurity #cyber_training #DigitalFuture #startups #productmanagement

The release of Claude Mythos has raised serious concerns in Delhi and in capitals across the world about what the model can do, who has access to it, and what it means for national infrastructure security.Bilateral engagement with Anthropic is natural and should be pursued, but it will not solve the problem. US technology companies are bound by US law regardless of foreign jurisdiction, as the ICC learned in 2025 when Microsoft blocked its Chief Prosecutor's email on US sanctions. Working at the level of model access may not help as the patching bottleneck affects every defender, with or without model access.If we cannot act at the level of the model, we must act at the level of the data ecosystem the model is being used against. India has already built the tools for this through DEPA. They turn out to be exactly what is needed for cyber defence at national scale. #DEPA indiatoday.in/amp/technology…