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Imagine buying gold or real estate as easily as sending money online. This is Nandan Nilekani’s vision for a ‘Finternet’—a tokenized, AI-driven world where assets like gold and real estate become more easily transactable.
The man who built the foundation now wants to build an internet for finance (Finternet), making it much easier to trade illiquid assets than it is today.
“We will go live in 2026,” Nilakani announced at the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai. The goal, he said, is to unlock the “trillions of dollars” Indians have parked in gold and real estate and put that money to work.
Nilekani aims to take its next big project beyond India to Singapore, New York, San Francisco and Switzerland.
“We think tokens and AI will catalyze that change,” he said.
What is tokenization?
When an asset is tokenized, each token then represents a piece or the whole of that asset which can then be bought, sold, or traded digitally. For example, a building worth ₹10 crore can be tokenized into 1,000 tokens.
A person can buy shares of that asset, its two tokens are worth say ₹ 1 lakh each which makes ownership easier. The same logic applies for gold or any other asset class.
“Tokenization is nothing but allowing an asset to travel with all its attributes,” Nilakani explained.
“What we are suggesting is using tokenization inside a regulatory framework, embedded compliance, but unlocking the potential of tokenized assets,” he said.
How does it work?
Demonstrations at the annual festival revealed that Finternet features an AI chatbot that helps users navigate investing and trading assets to gain ownership of real estate properties.
The user must first sign up and obtain a “Finturn Address” to store identification, credentials or any type of assets. People who already have their identity documents on DigiLocker can import them directly, create an online profile, and link it to their bank, investment and tax accounts.
“Real estate builders will tokenize the product they are building. Once done, they can request third-party auditors, testers to verify all the provenance behind it and submit proof,”
The platform’s Approved Project Financing (APF) carries out due diligence for the real estate builder or property owner as well as the borrower or buyer.
‘Ignition for Financial Inclusion’
Apart from Finturn, Nandan Nilekani highlighted more areas of growth despite success in digital identity, payments and e-signatures, which he said was another “silent success”.
“Go beyond inclusion to allow people to fulfill their aspirations and empower them even more. There are many things to it. While we have done a great job on ID for individuals, we have to do better on ID for businesses,” he said.
“We need a single business ID around which we can do things,” he said.
Nilekani also highlighted the need to improve cross-border financial services, especially as India is the largest receiver of inward remittances in the world.