Nandan Nilekani on Globalization

As co-chair of the G20 taskforce on Digital Public Infrastructure, Nilekani is pushing the DPI concept globally. Estonia and Nigeria have already adopted real-time payment systems and digital IDs on the model; he hopes to build a global coalition around the idea to help countries leapfrog development trajectories in a resource-scarce world.

In January 2023, Nilekani was appointed co-chair of the G20 Task Force on Digital Public Infrastructure for Economic Transformation, Financial Inclusion and Development — putting him at the centre of India's G20 presidency push to export the Aadhaar-UPI stack as a global template for developing economies.

Foreign Policy named him among the Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2010, and in 2014 he received The Economist's Social and Economic Innovation Award for his Aadhaar leadership — international recognition that his contribution was not merely a domestic programme but a transferable governance innovation.

TED's own framing emphasised that Nilekani had helped move India into the age of IT — a corporate legacy claim that, by being placed alongside his ideas-for-India talk, established a continuity between his Infosys work and his imminent public-sector assignment.