- Lived:
- born 2 June 1955, Bangalore (Bengaluru) — living, as of September 2026; the life has run Bangalore → Bombay (IIT) → Bangalore (Infosys) → Delhi (Aadhaar) → Bangalore again
- Field:
- technology — software entrepreneur turned builder of public digital infrastructure: Aadhaar, and the "India Stack" that runs on it
- The Big Idea:
- That identity and payments can be built like roads — public infrastructure anyone can use — and that a state which cannot recognise its poorest citizens can be given, in software, the eyes to see them. The critics answer: eyes that can see you can also watch you, and eyes that fail can erase you.
- In their words:
- "The playing field is being levelled." (his remark to Thomas Friedman, Bangalore, 2004 — the sentence that became the book title The World Is Flat; as of September 2026)
- If you remember one thing:
- A man who had already won at business walked away from it, took a spare office in Delhi, and built the largest identity system in human history — and India is still arguing, in its highest court and its poorest villages, about what exactly he built.