Indian aviation soars high with Digi Yatra’s biometric-enabled passenger experiences

Many iconic cinema and TV moments have happened at airports. In F.R.I.E.N.D.S, Ross scrambles through Newark and JFK airports looking for Rachel before she finally gets off the plane. Ryan Reynolds barely catches up with Sandra Bullock at the end of The Proposal before she flies to New York. Love Actually ends with real footage of lovers meeting at London Heathrow Airport. 

There are countless other movies where the hero has one last chance to woo his lady love. Yes, we are talking about the airport chase by the leading actors to make a last-ditch effort to win over their love interest in the final scene. The culmination of ‘happily ever afters’ at busy airports is common in romantic movies.

Have you ever wondered how the lead actor entered the airport as well as the aircraft with such ease when we are expected to wait in multiple queues at the airport before boarding the flight?  The smooth entry and boarding seem like an unrealistic fear that only happens in movies. Well, it is also happening in India! With Digi Yatra, passengers (who may or may not be chasing their love interests) can also enter the airport terminal and board a flight without waiting in long queues.

Digi Yatra: A revolutionary shift

The ongoing aviation transformation in India is closely connected with digital technologies. From a past where physical entry processes and multiple security checks were the only option, we now have biometric-enabled digital processing. Moving through airports as quickly as they do in the movies is no longer just fiction. Take for instance, the Western Indian city of Pune, where the international airport facilitated the travel of more than a million passengers on 31st January 2024. It was Digi Yatra’s innovative ecosystem, which made it possible by enabling seamless airport entry, check-in and boarding processes. And it’s not just the Pune Airport; this futuristic technology is now a part of 16 major Indian airports, with the larger vision being to take it across the globe. 

With Digi Yatra, the Indian aviation industry is transitioning into a new era, providing world-class services to its passengers and reducing the burden on airport personnel, who had to manually verify the identity and flight details of passengers daily. Instead of standing in long queues across airport checkpoints, passengers now pass through the gates in just five seconds using their faces as a single token. Imagine the number of hours saved when there are thousands and millions of passengers to deal with in a day. 

Currently, 4.5 million users trust Digi Yatra for seamless entry, check-in and boarding processes at airports. Moreover, the application has been used nearly 27 million times at airports to date across the country. Passengers prefer the simplicity and convenience that come with biometric processes, heaving a sigh of relief from bottlenecks such as showing multiple documents like identity, e-ticket, boarding pass etc., at multiple checkpoints.

The question that often arises is how everything is so seamless. The answer is rather simple: Digi Yatra application leverages facial recognition technology (FRT), allowing travellers to pass through various checkpoints at airports using contactless processes to validate their identity and travel credentials. This digital processing system covers terminal entry gates, security checks, baggage drop and aircraft boarding, enabling passengers to enjoy a paperless journey experience without the hassles of repeated identity checks. 

Digi Yatra’s unique inception story

India’s aviation sector witnessed a key milestone in 1928 when the country’s first civil airport became operational. Today, 96 years later, the country boasts 138 operational airports and 686 aircraft, making it the world’s third-largest domestic aviation market. With a $12 billion investment in new airport infrastructure, the Indian aviation industry will be one of the fastest-growing markets, expected to serve 500 million passengers by 2030. While SITA predicts that by 2026, 70% of airlines will have biometric ID management in place worldwide, the groundwork for this vision was already laid in India with the inception of Digi Yatra.

Digi Yatra’s ideation journey goes back to 2015. While designing the user flow for passenger experiences at Bangalore Airport, the founders imagined a hypothetical scenario: how challenging it would be for a mother to manage her kids while showing their ID and boarding pass to the airport personnel. With Digi Yatra, the goal was to ensure passengers could pass through all the airport checkpoints seamlessly. The first trial run was conducted in January 2017, in association with Jet Airways. After highly positive passenger feedback and a green light from regulatory bodies, including the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Bureau of Civil Aviation, and UIDAI, the platform was officially launched in December 2022.

Digi Yatra is an industry-led initiative promoted by the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MOCA) and built, operated and maintained by the Digi Yatra Foundation, a not-for-profit entity. Its shareholders include the Airport Authority of India (AAI), Hyderabad International Airport Ltd (HIAL), Cochin International Airport Ltd (CIAL), Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL), Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL), and Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL). The inspiration behind Digi Yatra was clear: achieving contactless, seamless processing of passengers at airports based on facial recognition technology (FRT).

The platform’s strong foundation stands on four core pillars: connected passengers, connected flying, connected airports and connected systems, ensuring easy entry at all checkpoints. It is an industry-led initiative aligned with Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s Digital India vision to transform the nation into a digitally empowered society. It intends to create memorable, contactless and safe digital travel experiences for passengers at airports across the country.

Digi Yatra’s pathbreaking self-sovereign identity and decentralised ecosystem

Understanding that a strong security framework is integral in today’s tech-driven times, Digi Yatra prioritises passengers’ data safety and security. Leveraging the fundamental principles of privacy by design (PbD), the application follows the interesting and pathbreaking concept of self-sovereign identity and offers paperless and seamless experiences.

The concept follows the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards, using verifiable credentials (VCs), decentralised identifiers (DIDs), and a layer of trust viz. a distributed ledger technology (DLT) (e. g. Hyperledger Aries Go/ ACAPy). The use of wallets and encryption using public-private key pairs ensures data privacy and protection.

Moreover, passengers’ personally identifiable information (PII) data is not stored in any central storage. With a decentralised mobile-based ID storage system, the application ensures the credentials are stored locally on the users’ own mobile phones. This reduces the risk of data breach, loss, misuse, theft or pilferage and ensures data privacy and security. Now, passengers must share their data only while they travel, and the information is purged from the app system within 24 hours of flight departure.

Digi Yatra’s recent marketing campaign, ‘Don’t Know Your Customer’, focuses on spreading awareness about the application not having access to passengers’ information. Simultaneously, the activities are promoting the application’s future-forward and committed approach to addressing customers’ pain points at airports and resolving the same with its innovative services.

Future roadmap

Technology will be a defining factor for the aviation industry’s future landscape. India is already at the forefront of this transformation, adopting advanced technologies to address rising air travel demand, increasing passenger volumes and congestion of airports. By enabling automatic digital processing of passengers with reduced wait times, Digi Yatra is making movement inside airport premises more streamlined.

With its innovative business model and successful implementation of its idea in airports across the country, the platform has earned a reputation as the future of air travel over the years. Having integrated its technology across 14 airports in just 18 months, Digi Yatra foresees expansion to 15 additional airports in the times to come, taking the total number to 29 domestically. There are also plans to add features such as passport-based enrolment and electronic passports. The application is further expected to expand its use case to the broader transportation and hospitality industries in the times to come. The ultimate vision is to ensure Digi Yatra becomes synonymous with identity verification.

With Digi Yatra, India will become a torchbearer in implementing a self-sovereign identity-based solution, offering a seamless, hassle-free and health-risk-free passenger process at airports across India. So, the hero will successfully catch up with the heroine just in time to profess his feelings and fly away together. Now, that’s an excellent customer experience!

About the author

Suresh Khadakbhavi,CEO, Digi Yatra Foundation
Copyright: Digi Yatra Foundation

Mr. Suresh Khadakbhavi is the Chief Executive Officer of Digi Yatra Foundation, a pioneering organisation dedicated to revolutionising air travel in India. Suresh leads the foundation’s operations, business acquisition, and development with strategic vision.

With over 20 years of professional experience, Suresh holds a B.E. in Electronics and Communication from Karnataka University. His diverse career spans roles in the Telecom, IT, and Aviation industries, providing him with extensive expertise in telecommunications, innovation, and the IT industry.

Under Suresh’s leadership, Digi Yatra Foundation has become the driving force behind the National Air Travel Programme, known as Digi Yatra. His robust technological framework and strategic foresight have positioned the foundation as a leader in the aviation sector, setting new benchmarks for efficiency and security in passenger processing.

He is committed to driving Digi Yatra’s growth and innovation, aiming to expand the foundation’s impact globally.