AI adoption at scale is hard. Just look at India, which processes about 20 billion transactions every month

Shankar Maruwada and

December 30, 2025, 6:00 AM ET

Shankar Maruwada is CEO and co-founder of the EkStep Foundation. He was part of the founding team of Aadhaar, India’s digital identity program reaching more than 1.4 billion people, and as Head of Demand Generation and Communication at the Unique Identification Authority of India, he helped drive its national adoption. He has worked with governments and global institutions, including the MIT Media Lab, on population-scale digital systems.

Angela Chitkara is founder of the US–India Corridor, a cross-border advisory firm, and serves on the faculty of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She advises companies and institutions on governance, risk and resilience, and workforce transformation, and has worked on India’s Aadhaar project.