Unlockdownable: Digital adoption gets Covid boost

Teachers and farmers, pensioners and students, soldiers and gamers—there really isn’t anyone left untouched by the sweeping changes being wrought by technology on lives and livelihoods worldwide. Closer home, nearly every second Indian now uses the internet to chat, shop, make a payment, search for information or just watch a show. The new mores of work and play induced by the pandemic have only served to accelerate this phenomenon.

Consider these numbers. At the start of the lockdown in April, India’s unified payments interface (UPI) recorded 999 million transactions worth about 1.51 lakh crore. By September, the channel had clocked 1,800 million transactions worth 3.62 lakh crore. The country’s largest e-grocer saw gross sales nearly double to 1,900 crore in the third quarter compared to sales of 1,000 crore in the first.