The architect behind Indian tech exceptionalism

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Editor's note: Sharad Sharma is among the most powerful people in the Indian tech landscape. As the co-founder of the Indian Software Product Industry Round Table, or iSPIRT, he has led several teams of engineers responsible for laying the foundations for a number of public technological systems as part of the Digital India vision.  iSPIRT’s journey over the last decade represents a change in the country’s policy making and economic planning landscape. While New Delhi controlled the economy for several decades post-Independence, bankers in Mumbai grew to control the flows of the economy from the late 1990s onwards. Now, another shift is underway in Bengaluru, where technologists design public platforms that gain scale through government and private sector adoption. While bankers in Mumbai still dictate where the money flows, how the money flows is determined by technologists.  I met Sharma last week over coffee at IKP-EDEN, a hardware startup incubator in Koramangala, Bengaluru. The 58-year old splits his time between the incubator and iSPIRT Foundation, which is across the road.  “Our goal is to solve India’s hard problems in financial inclusion, health …