Abstract: India’s Digital Public Infrastructure is often told through UPI, Aadhar, and DigiLocker. In this talk, we will examine how Ipsator’s IRCTC eCatering - a food delivery platform for 13 million daily passengers belongs in this conversation.

DPI refers to foundational digital systems (identity, payment, data rails) that enable secure, population-scale public services. Unlike closed commercial platforms, DPI is open, interoperable and governed as a public good. Ipsator’s work on “eCatering” illustrates this model. These are designed for scale, interoperability, and inclusivity.

IRCTC eCatering is often seen as a food delivery service for train passengers. But in reality, it represents a deeper shift. From building isolated digital solutions to creating an ecosystem that operates at a population scale across India.

eCatering solves a uniquely complex problem: serving a user who is continuously in motion, across a fragmented network of stations, vendors, and delivery constraints. Solving it required more than just product engineering. It demanded rethinking identity, discovery, logistics, coordination and compliance. And not as features, but as interoperable system layers. The use of PNR as a contextual identity, real-time train data for decisioning, and deep integrations with aggregators, vendors, and railway systems enabled a unified operational fabric across the ecosystem.

Over time, the platform evolved from enabling transactions to orchestrating an ecosystem standardising vendor quality, ensuring regulatory compliance, and scaling reliably across 475+ stations and millions of users. In doing so, it began exhibiting the defining properties of DPI - openness, interoperability, and public accountability to the public it serves.

This talk explores that evolution - from product to platform to infrastructure and draws out lessons for practitioners, policymakers, and innovators designing the next generation of public-facing digital systems in India.

About the Speakers:

Abhinav Kushwaha and Gaurav Kumar are the co-founders of Ipsator Analytics Pvt Ltd, both B.Tech graduates in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi.

Abhinav has over 15 years of experience building and scaling digital products, having worked with companies such as Flipkart, PhonePe, BlueJeans by Verizon and Citrix. He is also the co-founder of EyEagle, focused on innovating for safety and healthcare.

Gaurav is passionate about solving tough problems through technology. Before co-founding Ipsator, he worked with Nomura and Ubona Technologies, co-founded Zicly Technologies — a data communication startup.

Together, they are accountable for the technology, growth, and customer experience of the IRCTC eCatering platform (ecatering.irctc.co.in), a marketplace that connects train passengers with food vendors across India while adhering to government compliance at its core. The platform has been live since February 2018.

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