Union Minister for Communications and Development of North Eastern Region Shri Jyotiraditya M. Scindia delivered a keynote address at the Global Fintech Festival 2026 in Mumbai, outlining India's remarkable digital transformation and its implications for inclusive intelligent finance.
Scindia highlighted India's massive digital infrastructure growth over the past decade, with internet access expanding from 25 crore to 100 crore people and broadband access growing 16 times from 6 crore to 103 crore users. He emphasized that India's 5G rollout, launched in 2022, has achieved 99.9% district coverage and 85% population coverage within just 26 months, supported by over 5 lakh 5G base stations and a capital expenditure of Rs 4.5 lakh crore. Data costs have dramatically reduced to approximately 10 cents per GB, making India the world's cheapest data capital.
The Minister presented extraordinary statistics on UPI's growth, noting that from 90,000 transactions in its first month, UPI has scaled to include more than 740 banks and processed 24,162 crore transactions worth approximately ₹314 lakh crore in FY 2025-26. UPI now accounts for 84% of domestic digital transactions, while India represents about 49% of global real-time digital payment volumes.
Scindia outlined several government initiatives driving financial inclusion, including approximately 60 crore Jan Dhan accounts and 9 billion documents stored on DigiLocker. He emphasized that smartphones have become the new bank branches, bringing fintech connectivity to almost every village in the North Eastern Region. Through the Digital Bharat Nidhi program, 22,000 towers are being established across 34,000 previously unconnected villages with the objective of achieving 100% telecom saturation.
On security measures, Scindia highlighted the Sanchar Saathi initiative which has disconnected more than 88 lakh suspicious mobile connections using AI-powered tool ASTR. The Financial Fraud Risk Indicator helps ring-fence suspicious transactions and prevent fraudulent payments before money leaves accounts. He called for standardized operating procedures across banking networks to strengthen citizen protection.
The Minister articulated three core principles: innovation scales when infrastructure is open; inclusion scales when infrastructure is affordable; and trust scales when infrastructure is secure. He advocated for creating a Trust Grid that converges telecom, digital identity, UPI, and financial systems, suggesting greater convergence of Aadhaar and UPI to enable citizen participation in the digital economy.
Looking forward, Scindia noted India's development of an indigenous 4G telecom stack and ongoing work on 5G technology. India's 6G mission aims to contribute 10% of global 6G patents and become a valuable partner in developing 6G standards. He concluded by emphasizing the need to democratize AI intelligence beyond corporations and banks to make it available to every citizen.