MeitY partners with PhonePe to use transaction data for infrastructure planning

NEW DELHI: India’s infrastructure plans are about to get a data-driven pulse. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with PhonePe to bring insights from its enterprise data intelligence platform PhonePe PulsePro into national infrastructure planning, economic analysis and urban and rural development.

Under the partnership, PulsePro metrics will be integrated into the PM GatiShakti National Master Plan portal, which is managed in collaboration with the Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics (BISAG-N).

The integration will give government planners access to granular, hyperlocal transactional insights drawn from PhonePe’s digital transaction ecosystem. The data will sit alongside existing datasets, giving policymakers another layer of information to assess market activity and emerging trends across different geographies.

MeitY secretary S Krishnan said the granular and hyperlocal insights available through PhonePe PulsePro could complement existing datasets and provide greater visibility into emerging trends across markets and geographies.

PulsePro uses aggregated and anonymised transaction data to generate insights across geographies, categories and markets. Rather than providing individual-level transaction information, the platform is designed to offer a broader view of economic and consumer activity.

The partnership brings private-sector transaction intelligence into the PM GatiShakti framework, potentially giving planners a more detailed picture of how markets and economic activity are evolving while assessing infrastructure and development requirements.

Karthik Raghupathy, Head of Strategy at PhonePe, said transaction-led insights could contribute to a stronger data ecosystem and support evidence-based infrastructure planning.

For the government, the significance of the arrangement lies in combining existing public datasets with private-sector insights. The additional data layer could help planners identify patterns across markets and locations and factor them into decisions around infrastructure, urban development and rural growth.

The MoU therefore marks a move towards making India’s infrastructure planning not just map-led, but increasingly informed by the economic activity taking place on the ground.