India is set to introduce its next groundbreaking digital public infrastructure (DPI), named Finternet, following the monumental success of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). The ambitious project, backed by Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, is scheduled to launch its first applications in the country's capital markets next year, starting with regulated financial assets.
From Capital Markets to Real Estate: A Pragmatic Rollout
Principal architect Siddharth Shetty revealed to TOI that the launch will follow a pragmatic, phased approach. While the long-term vision includes complex areas like land and real estate, regulators and market participants see capital markets as the more immediate opportunity. The reasoning is clear: titles are more straightforward, issuers and investors are already under stringent regulation, and various tokenisation pilots are already in motion within the existing securities framework.
The initial launch in 2025 will focus on regulated financial assets like securities. This sequencing marks a strategic shift from the more headline-grabbing idea of tokenising India's vast property market, which Nilekani had earlier described as a way to "unlock locked assets" in the economy.
An "Operating System" for Global Finance
Finternet is built on the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) blueprint for "unified ledgers." These are shared, programmable platforms that hold tokenised money and various financial assets in one place, allowing them to be transacted and settled together in real-time under a common set of rules.
Shetty describes Finternet as an "operating system" for finance, designed to replace today's fragmented and siloed systems. "In traditional financial infrastructure, your assets are locked inside one system. Tokenisation is about letting that asset move with you," Shetty explained. He illustrated that this would allow an MSME to connect a single invoice to a multitude of lenders programmatically, instead of navigating one-off integrations for each financial product.
In this new design, a single digital wallet would hold both identity credentials and tokenised assets. This would enable individuals and businesses to move seamlessly between different applications for property, credit, or investments while using the same underlying universal infrastructure.
Challenges and the Global Vision
Despite the multi-trillion-dollar ambition, the project is currently being developed by a compact, roughly 10-member "network of labs" spread across India, the United States, Singapore, and Switzerland. The protocols are being designed from day one to be agnostic to specific asset types and jurisdictions.
On the tokenisation of land, Shetty remains cautious. He expects commercial real estate and new primary projects with clear title records to adopt the model first. Legacy residential properties, especially in states with complex and disputed title histories, will take significantly longer to integrate. Since land is a state subject in India, adoption is likely to be a patchwork of early-mover states and laggards, rather than a single national rollout.
This political and legal complexity is a key reason why capital markets have been chosen as the first proving ground for Finternet. The ultimate goal, as outlined by Nilekani and BIS researchers, is to create a global "network of financial ecosystems" where tokenised assets and programmable money move as effortlessly as data packets on the internet.
The journey begins with securities in India's capital markets next year, with plans to eventually extend to land, gold, and cross-border retail payment flows, positioning India at the forefront of the next evolution in global finance.
