Over 138.34 crore Aadhaar numbers generated, DigiLocker crosses 37 crore users: Centre

NEW DELHI: India's digital infrastructure has undergone a transformative evolution in recent years and so far, 138.34 crore Aadhaar numbers have been generated, the government announced on Sunday.

DigiLocker, a platform for digital document verification, now stores 776 crore documents, serving more than 37.046 crore users.

Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing (DIKSHA), the world’s largest education platform, has helped impart 556.37 crore learning sessions. It has achieved 17.95 crore course enrollments and 14.37 crore course completions, according to the government.

"With a rapidly expanding digital economy, driven by innovations in cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and digital governance, India's infrastructure is continuously evolving to meet the growing demands of the public and private sectors," said the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

After reaching a record high in October of 16.58 billion transactions and a value of Rs 23.50 lakh crore, UPI transactions in November stood at 15.48 billion transactions (38 per cent year-on-year growth) with a value of Rs 21.55 lakh crore (24 per cent YoY growth).

The number of UPI transactions may touch 25 billion a month towards the end of 2025.

One of the central pillars of India’s digital infrastructure is the expansion and development of data centres.

India’s data centre industry is poised for substantial growth, with expectations for a significant increase in IT load capacity, which is approximately at 1000 MW currently.

The National Informatics Centre (NIC) has established state-of-the-art National Data Centres (NDC) in cities like Delhi, Pune, Bhubaneswar, and Hyderabad, providing robust cloud services to government ministries, state governments, and public sector undertakings (PSUs).

These data centres also offer essential disaster recovery and hosting services, ensuring continuity in government operations.

At NDC, storage capacity has been expanded to approximately 100PB, including All Flash Enterprise Class Storage, Object Storage, and Unified Storage. Additionally, around 5,000 odd servers are deployed to support various cloud workloads. Another state-of-the-art NDC (Tier-III) of 200 Racks expandable to 400 Racks is being established at Guwahati, said the government.

To address the unique challenges faced by the northeastern region, the National Data Centre - North East Region (NDC-NER) was launched in September 2020.

This facility aims to bridge the digital divide, foster socio-economic development, and improve public services in the region by providing a reliable, high-performance data storage and cloud service infrastructure.

India’s growing cloud service ecosystem has been crucial in supporting its digital transformation.

Over 300 government departments are now utilising cloud services, contributing to the rapid growth of India’s digital public infrastructure.

Other significant platforms include Government e-Marketplace (GeM) for government procurement, UMANG (providing access to government services), and API SETU (for open APIs). Co-WIN and Aarogya Setu have been pivotal in health services, including vaccination tracking and contact tracing.