Take homegrown digital payments railroad, UPI across the world: Ashwini Vaishnaw to startups

Indian startups should look to develop credit solutions for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) that can, like the government’s Swanidhi programme, provide help quickly and with minimal paperwork, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Tuesday.

Vaishnaw was addressing the startup conference at the Digital India Week in Gandhinagar, Gujarat.

The minister appealed to startups to take the homegrown digital payments railroad, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), across the world.


“I will request all the companies working in fintech, consumer space to look at it and make efforts to take it to the world. Can we expand ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce) to make it the next UPI? Take a serious look at it and see how it can be a great platform. We believe it can be the next UPI,” Vaishnaw said.

Startup leaders such as Varun Khaitan, the co-founder of Urban Company; Rohan Verma, chief executive of MapmyIndia, and Srinath Ramakrishnan, the co-founder of Zetwerk, among others, as well as top executives from global companies such as Meta and Google attended the event.

Addressing the gathering, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said countries across the globe had come to realise India’s entrepreneurial power.

“The world, too, has now come to realise India’s entrepreneurial power and many countries have evinced interest for collaborations with our homegrown startups and unicorns,” Chandrasekhar said.

He also coined a slogan - ‘Saare Jahaan Se Achha, Digital India Hamara’ - for Digital India.