EkStep CTO Pramod Varma calls for big mindset to solve societal challenges through tech
The former chief architect of Aadhaar, Pramod Varma called upon the tech community to create digital playgrounds to solve various challenges affecting society.
Pramod Varma, the chief architect of Aadhaar, made an impassioned appeal to the tech community to follow the first principles approach and think really big and create something that would have an impact on billions of people.
The CTO of Foundation and Co-founder of FIDE, during a fireside chat at YourStory’s India Tech Leaders Conclave 2024, said, “World’s problem statements are untouched and we have to look at them systematically through a digital unified framework.”
In a conversation with YourStory Founder and CEO Shradha Sharma, he gave the example of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) which has taken financial services to the villages of India through mobile banking QR code-based payments. Varma is also the chief architect of India Stack, which provides a digital infrastructure for cashless payments in India.
Varma said there are fundamental challenges which sectors like health, agriculture, and hospitality face, and it is digital that can bridge the massive inequity which is being seen across all the developing countries across the world. “Six billion out of the eight billion people in the world are in dearth of access [to digital platforms],” he remarked.
He said technologists like him are working on creating new playgrounds at scale where a new set of players (read entrepreneurs) can innovate. The classic example is how the fintech segment boomed in the country through UPI platforms and led by Aadhaar.
“We are formalising a billion lives as we cannot have a broken, fragmented informal economy,” Varma said.
At the same time, Varma called for long-term thinking to ensure that the new emerging digital playgrounds get a strong foothold before anyone can look at making profits from such ventures.
He said the tech community also needs to look at various societal challenges and think of solutions which would have a 100X impact.
On the question of artificial intelligence and Gen AI, Varma said it is going to disrupt many jobs but not every job. He added that task-oriented and repetitive tasks might be eliminated but physical jobs will likely remain intact.
“People with entrepreneurial thinking will survive rather than those who are task-oriented,” he remarked.
Varma said the confidence within the country is very high and this provides the right environment to make some big bets.
“India has traditionally not invested in playing the big game and it is important to think bold,” he remarked.
On the role of policymakers in enabling such digital frameworks, Varma remarked the question remains that whether such steps are creating value.
“There has to be the right narrative and articulation. If you go to them (policymakers) with a good value proposition it will be backed,” Varma said.
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Edited by Kanishk Singh