The Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) of India is now truly going global, as an increasing number of countries are seeking assistance to implement this technology platform to deliver various citizen services.

“There is a huge opportunity of taking it (DPI) globally,” said Rajiv Bansal, CEO, National Institute for Smart Government (NISG) during a panel discussion on the topic “Digital Public Infrastructure of India going Global” at the Bengaluru Tech Summit (BTS) 2024.

DPI in India has become the driving force for delivering services from both the government and private sector. These include the nationwide Aadhar identity and the unified payment interface (UPI) for financial services.

According to Bansal, NISG is engaged with several countries to come out with pilot projects or provide consultancy services on how they can implement DPI. Sri Lanka is undertaking a nationwide ID project, while other countries like Gambia, Myanmar, Belize and Fiji are keen to implement DPI to deliver several citizen services.

NISG is a not-for-profit organisation set up in 2003 by the Indian government, based on a public-private partnership model. It aims to assist governments in ushering in smart governance, process reforms and digitalisation.

Bansal said the DPI framework has achieved a certain level of maturity where it is based on fundamentals of open source technology, interoperability, subject to regulation and offering services for social welfare.

The greater interest for India’s DPI has largely come from developing countries who are looking at this platform for setting up a national identity setup similar to Aadhar. According to Bansal, developed economies are also interested in DPI but for other kinds of services.

However, Sharad Sharma, Founder – iSPIRT Foundation, was of the belief that the various functionalities from DPI till date in India are early iterations, and there is a vast scope to deliver numerous other services especially in the area of healthcare.

Deepinder Goyal has clarified that Zomato does plan to pay the candidate selected for the Chief of Staff role, and the condition of paying Rs 20 lakh to initiative was merely a filter as the company has no plans to collect the amount.

In a post shared on X, the company’s co-founder and CEO also announced after closing the application deadline for his chief of staff opening.

This comes a day after Goyal put up the job posting on the social media platform. To make the offer not as lucrative, he announced that the role would not have any salary, at least for the first year. Not only this, the selected candidate would have had to contribute a sum of Rs 20 lakh to Zomato’s Feeding India initiative. 

Any salary discussion would only happen from the second year, he said in the original post. During the first year, Zomato would also offer Rs 50 lakh to the charity selected by the candidate.

Zomato received more than 18,000 applications and closed the process at 2 pm earlier today.

The foodtech executive had claimed that the opportunity offers 10X more learning than a two-year degree from a top management school.

Goyal, in an earlier post, had highlighted that applicants came from a diverse mix of financial backgrounds, categorising them into those who have all the money, those who have some of the money, those who claim they don’t have the money, and those who genuinely don’t have the money.

It is unclear what the Chief of Staff’s duties will be as the job description is vague. The job would entail “anything and everything to build the future of Zomato (including Blinkit, District, Hyperpure and Feeding India),” the post read.

Tata Cliq has rebranded to Tata CLiQ Fashion. With a complete visual redesign, the ecommerce platform has introduced a new brand manifesto and packaging, and refreshed both its app and web experience.

The rebranding is set to reposition the brand from a horizontal marketplace to a specialised vertical platform focused on fashion and lifestyle across categories including footwear, apparel, watches, gadgets, beauty, accessories, and home, the company said in a statement.

The new logo design encompasses a rose pink and cerulean blue colour palette.

“Our new brand identity and positioning reflect our commitment to offering consumers the best of fashion curated for their evolving needs. It is a strategic pivot to drive growth and our leadership in the fashion category. By focusing on fashion and lifestyle, our goal is to elevate fashion as a powerful form of self-expression,” said Gopal Asthana, CEO, Tata CLiQ.

In addition to the currently existing stores and over 6,000 brands, it will also introduce thematic stores that will showcase a selection of styles and essentials from a wide range of brands, the company said.

The brand is also set to roll out a new feature, ‘Fit Assessment’ which will help customers find products suited to them by analysing their past purchases and understanding their size and preferences.

The platform will also introduce virtual try-on and hyperpersonalisation features in the next few months to enhance the shopping experience, and streamline the search process the company said.

It will also launch an e-magazine, ‘e-Stylist’, which will be available on the app and will offer users ready access to trend reports, care and maintenance guides, how-to-style playbooks, and theme-based curated shopping lists to keep them updated on the latest fashion trends.