IIT Hyderabad (IITH), in partnership with the Department of Posts and the National Remote Sensing Centre (ISRO), has launched DIGIPIN—a compact, human-readable, geospatial addressing system set to redefine how India navigates, delivers, and connects.
Unlike traditional descriptive addresses, which often lack uniformity and machine-readability, DIGIPIN offers a precise, intuitive, and inclusive code that represents the exact latitude and longitude of any location in India, from dense cityscapes to isolated maritime regions. Built as a digital public infrastructure layer, DIGIPIN aims to streamline postal operations, emergency responses, e-commerce delivery, and public services.
Professor B S Murty, Director of IITH, called DIGIPIN a “revolution in navigation,” emphasising its role in “building a scalable and interoperable national address architecture.” Developed by faculty from the Department of Electrical Engineering, including Dr. Shashank Vatedka, Prof. Soumya Jana, and Dr. Lakshmi Prasad Natarajan, the technology uses a geohashing scheme that enables offline extraction of location data with minimal complexity.
Notably, DIGIPIN maintains privacy, containing no personal identifiers and requiring only location-enabled devices to retrieve codes. Its machine-readability allows applications such as printing barcodes on consignments, integrating with digital wallets, and use in high-priority zones like disaster relief and public utility mapping.
As India positions itself at the forefront of digital innovation, DIGIPIN stands as a symbol of inclusive, accessible, and future-proof technology, ready to empower every citizen with a precise digital identity, one location at a time.
