From Paan Shops to Pinpoints: A Code for Every Corner

Last week, India Post released a press note announcing the rollout of DIGIPIN, a 10-character digital code designed to locate every 4-by-4 metre parcel of land across the country. DIGIPIN—short for Digital Postal Index Number—aims to bring order to a landscape where addresses continue to be more narrative than numeric. Built by the Department of Posts with IIT Hyderabad and ISRO, it assigns an alphanumeric identity to every patch of Indian ground by satellite. For instance, the DIGIPIN for Dak Bhawan, the headquarters of India Post, is derived from its geographic coordinates 28.622788°N, 77.213033°E—DIGIPIN: 39J49LL8T4. One need only visit the India Post website to determine the DIGIPIN of any location.

The six-digit PIN code, introduced in 1972, divided India into zones and routes, reflecting an era when postmen knew local landmarks better than GPS satellites ever would. But the logic of that system has frayed in a digital economy built on instant addressability. E-commerce, emergency response, and welfare delivery now require something tighter, sharper, more mappable. DIGIPIN answers that need. Once generated, it requires no internet connection. The system is open source, state-funded, and designed for integration into public infrastructure. It doesn’t replace older address forms but overlays them—an invisible scaffold across the country’s topography.

India has seen prior efforts at this kind of spatial codification. Zippr, a Hyderabad-based startup, offered compressed address codes for smart cities and rescue services. Google’s Plus Codes divided the globe into grid-based locators, embedded in Maps. What3Words assigned three-word markers to every 3-metre square on the planet—charming in concept but alien in syntax. Each tried, and largely failed, to embed itself in Indian everyday life.

DIGIPIN differs in its origin and orientation. It is designed from within—an address protocol that speaks the language of Indian governance, not Silicon Valley convenience. It begins not with the consumer but with the state. At its core lies a political idea: that every citizen, regardless of property or paperwork, should be locatable. DIGIPIN allows a street vendor, a migrant worker, or a resident of an unregularised colony to claim a mappable presence. In a country where services follow documentation, and documentation follows address, that presence can mean access.

Yet precision can also centralise control. A coordinate can link to a ration card, a property record, a tax liability. Over time, what begins as inclusion may evolve into classification—who lives where, how long, under what name. A DIGIPIN is a tool. Like all tools, it reflects the hand that wields it.

What is also true is that the economics of digital addressing have rarely worked in the private sector. Zippr’s business model—licensing codes to municipalities and logistics firms—ran into inertia. What3Words charges usage fees, a barrier in cost-sensitive markets. Google’s Plus Codes remain the most frictionless, but their uptake is uneven. DIGIPIN, by contrast, is not built for profit. Its utility is infrastructural, not transactional.

Other countries have experimented with similar schemes. Kenya’s PostaPlus, Mongolia’s embrace of What3Words, and Japan’s address reformatting each illustrate a shared anxiety: that modern states can no longer afford to be location-imprecise. India’s approach—low-key, open-source, institutionally absorbed—may well offer a template for others.

But what does it mean to name a square of land without naming anything else? No road, no landmark, no tree. Just a string of characters that machines understand and humans forget. So the traditional address—rich in oral history and spatial memory—may endure.

Still, as a code gets generated somewhere in India, a place that was once hard to find is now pinned—cleanly and irreversibly. The map grows denser, the nation more searchable. And with each square that enters the grid, a new kind of address begins to take root.

DIGIPINIndian Postal SystemKenyaMongoliaPIN codeWhat3Words