The IITH team says DIGIPIN is tailor-made for Indian conditions — densely packed urban colonies, scattered rural settlements, and even regions without street names.
Published Jul 08, 2025 | 5:35 PM ⚊ Updated Jul 08, 2025 | 5:35 PM
DIGIPIN is like the old PIN code, but smarter, faster, and way more accurate. (Supplied)
Synopsis: DIGIPIN stands for Digital Postal Index Number. Think of it like the old PIN code, but smarter, faster, and way more accurate. Developed in partnership with India Post and ISRO’s National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), DIGIPIN is a short, ten-character alphanumeric code that precisely points to your home, shop, office, or even a boat in the sea, down to the last metre. It’s like giving every location in India its own personal Aadhaar number.
You’re in the middle of an important Zoom meeting when your phone rings. It’s the delivery guy. “Sir, galli lo vachhesaanu… mee building edi?(Sir, I’m in your lane, could you tell which building I have to come?)”
Sounds familiar?
Despite all the advancements in online shopping, prepaid orders, no-contact delivery, lightning-fast shipping, finding the exact address remains a major headache in India. The GPS on your phone might get the agent close, but “close enough” doesn’t always cut it in a maze of unnamed lanes and similar-looking buildings.
A group of researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH) believe they have found a solution, and it could change the way India handles addresses forever.
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Meet DIGIPIN: Your new digital address
DIGIPIN stands for Digital Postal Index Number. Think of it like the old PIN code, but smarter, faster, and way more accurate.
Developed in partnership with India Post and ISRO’s National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), DIGIPIN is a short, ten-character alphanumeric code that precisely points to your home, shop, office, or even a boat in the sea, down to the last metre. It’s like giving every location in India its own personal Aadhaar number.
What makes it special is that DIGIPIN works based on the exact latitude and longitude, the same global positioning system (GPS) coordinates used by Google Maps to find any place on Earth.
So instead of relying on an address like “Behind the Hanuman Temple, near the tea shop, opposite the red building”, you could just share your DIGIPIN. No more confusion, and no need for local knowledge.
Why do we need this?
Dr Shashank Vatedka, one of the key developers of DIGIPIN at IITH, speaking with South First explains it simply: “Descriptive addresses locate a place based on certain naming conventions. You identify the state, the district, the taluk, city, village, the locality, maybe the street and then the house or land parcel. However, these naming conventions are not standard, there can be multiple places with the same name.”
“It may require local knowledge—particularly in rural areas, where there may not be numbered streets or small localities, and subject to change—names of streets or localities can change, buildings can be added or removed, etc.”
That’s why delivery agents often have to call you. The address you gave may be correct, but the system simply doesn’t know how to find it precisely.
DIGIPIN fixes this by using your exact location on Earth, your latitude and longitude, and converting that into a code that’s easy to remember and share.
“DIGIPIN is designed to be purely dependent on the geographical location–latitude and longitude— and can complement traditional addressing to overcome its limitations. Therefore, this is unambiguous for a location, and not subject to change,” said Dr Vatedka to South First.
How does it work?
If you’ve ever dropped a location pin on WhatsApp, you’ve already used GPS coordinates. But those are long and complicated numbers like: Latitude: 17.3850° N, Longitude: 78.4867° E. Not easy to read, remember, or share.
DIGIPIN compresses that into a short code — for example, something like X5F6B2L9PQ which still contains all the same location information.
This is done using a method called geohashing, which is basically a clever way of converting two numbers (latitude and longitude) into a single code.
Geohashing scheme also encapsulates geographic coordinates into short, intuitive codes, which can be extracted even offline using location-enabled devices. Think of it like converting sugar and milk into a cup of tea, easier to carry and serve.
Plus, DIGIPIN doesn’t carry any personal information. It only tells your location — not your name, phone number, or anything else. So it’s privacy-friendly.
To know the DIGIPIN, user can visit the Know Your DIGIPIN page, and enter the longitude and latitude values on the search DIGIPIN tab. The pin is then generated.
However, according to the India Post website, one needs a device with Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) facility to find your precise location (latitude and longitude), which can then be converted into a DIGIPIN code. Department of Post is in the process of developing a web application which enable public to fetch the corresponding DIGIPIN of their location.
Where has it been rolled out?
On the 7 July, MapmyIndia embedded DIGIPIN with their flagship location application Mappls.
This integration aims to redefine precision addressing and seamless location based services. It might be capable of locating the exact apartment of a multi-storeyed building. Their objective strongly ensures last mile delivery.
Meanwhile, India Post, which manages postal services across the country, has already begun implementing DIGIPIN, starting with Indore. It is part of a larger project called DHRUVA, which is building a digital backbone for various services across the country.
Back in 2021, the Department of Posts released a white paper. According to Dr Vatedka,”We explored different approaches to designing such a system, and after several rounds of interaction with and inputs from the Department of Posts, later NRSC (ISRO) and various other organizations and stakeholders, the design evolved to become the current version of DIGIPIN.”
He added that the Department of Posts had released a beta version of the design to the public last year, which collected feedback, “there were minor adjustments made to the design in the final version,” he added.
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Tailor made for India
While other countries like Ghana have tried similar systems, the IITH team says DIGIPIN is tailor-made for Indian conditions — densely packed urban colonies, scattered rural settlements, and even regions without street names.
The system was developed by a team of electrical engineers at IITH: Prof. Soumya Jana, Dr Lakshmi Prasad Natarajan, and Dr Shashank Vatedka, with input from Tarandeep Singh, a former MTech student in Artificial Intelligence.
Their work was shaped over multiple rounds of feedback from the Department of Posts, NRSC-ISRO, and various other government and private stakeholders.
As India continues to expand its digital public infrastructure, DIGIPIN could soon become as familiar as your Aadhaar number or your phone number.
Dr Lakshmi Prasad Natarajan, Associate Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, IITH, mentioned that, “The idea was to make it as easy as possible to automatically assign codes and start using DIGIPIN with as little manual intervention as possible. In many cases, finding one’s DIGIPIN would be possible using only a device with a reasonably good location service—such as a smartphone—and an app equipped with a high-resolution map.”
(Edited by Sumavarsha)
