India has been on the cutting edge of technology and emerging trends since the 1990s and they have created a customizable system for other population dense countries looking to rapidly develop to bring the bulk of their population into the new technological revolution.
Since India's rapid development started in the 1990s it has become the 11th largest economy in the world and has the 4th largest purchasing power parity. It also has approximately 1/6th of the worlds 6 billion+ people, 80% of who are barely accounted for statistically.
This huge burgeoning and unrepresented market is being brought to the foreground by an incredibly daunting task undertaken by India to provide their population with a Unique ID. This system will use technology to connect their unconnected.
According to an article by international market research company Nielsen the system will improve over a billion lives. Nielsen quoted Nandan Nilekani, Chairman of the Unique Authority of India as saying that "over a third of India's 1.1 billion consumers had been largely overlooked in areas such as banking and social services."
The goal of this program is to provide banking and social services to the 80% of the Indian population without access to many of the resources now available in India, thanks to its incredible growth. Nilekani was also quoted as saying that "the poor remain a difficult to reach market. Their anonymity limits agencies from providing them services that are remotely available, and that could be accessed through a mobile phone. The absence of a universal, easy to verify identity system also prevents agencies from scaling towards national-level, more open systems where the poor can access services seamlessly, wherever they migrate."
This unique ID system will also open up huge markets for India's affordable technologies, advertising markets, and more.
This system implemented by India has created a model worth copying for countries in sub-Saharan Africa, South America, South-East Asia and other areas with large populations without access to necessary technologies and social services that are vital to thrive in the modern world.
India has been the world's model for changing from third-world country to world leader; now they can begin to share their systems and technologies with the developing world through a system that can be replicated.