Reimagining Digilocker and product design with Robin Dhanwani

Use Case

I was on my way back from a long day at work a few months ago. Went straight to bed. The next morning was busy. The day after too. And it was only a few days later that I noticed that my wallet has been missing.

All these days, I did not really have to take out my wallet. Almost everyone, from the grocer to the vegetable vendor accepts mobile payments in Bangalore. But then I had to fly out a few days later to Chennai and I started to panic.

How will I enter the airport without an identification card?

That’s when I downloaded Digilocker, the app launched by the Indian government to download and store all documents in a digital format. I downloaded my Aadhaar card, my driving license, and registration certificates for my vehicles.

These certificates are legally valid and I don’t’ really need physical copies anymore. It works at the airport and most other places I need it. And that’s when it struck me that Digilocker is really one of the most underrated apps in India today.

On Digilocker, you can download and store hundreds of documents issued by the government — even your education records and pension certificates.

I knew one of the people behind Digilocker. Amit Ranjan. He’s one of the few people who’ve gone from the private sector to join the government for a salary of Rs 1 to help deliver better digital governance in India. Amit had sold his startup Slideshare for $119 million to LinkedIn.

Every time I go to Delhi, I made it a point to meet Amit. Sitting at a coffee shop near IIT- Delhi, we’d talk about the startup scene in India. It was always an insightful conversation and I’d walk away feeling good that he was doing what he was doing.

So a few days ago, when Amit tweeted about a design agency that did some great work reimagining Digilocker, I had to get in touch and ask them to be on a podcast. From my past experience, I’ve noticed that most of the time, design firms, code shops, and companies don’t come together properly, and in most cases, it ends up in a disaster. So this was different and I wanted to figure out what’s different.

After the revamp, 30-Day retention rate for the Digilocker app jumped by 280% and it is also ranked #1 on the iOS top charts. The design agency is called Parallel and the founder of the agency is Robin Dhanwani. And he’s our guest on the show today.

About the guest

Robin is a techie turned designer and runs Parallel, a product design and innovation studio in Bengaluru. He is passionate about the power of workshops to help teams align, focus, deliver and specializes in Google's design sprint technique to help companies build better products. Believes the purpose of design is not just to create good experiences, but to move metrics. You can reach him on @robindhanwani on Twitter.

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