Building the Ship While Sailing – What the GST Rollout Reveals About Public Tech

We unpack the story behind one of India’s most ambitious technology-led public reforms – the Goods and Services Tax (GST) – and the making of its digital backbone, the GST Network (GSTN). GST reshaped how India collects and manages indirect taxes, merging 17 major taxes into a single unified system. But behind the scenes was a complex, high-stakes effort to design and implement the digital platform that would connect lakhs of businesses with the public tax reporting, payment, and compliance systems.

How do you build a platform of this scale while the reform itself is unfolding? What lessons does the GSTN story hold for future public technology projects, including the ongoing digitisation of India’s courts?

This episode is moderated by Surya Prakash BS, Programme Director at DAKSH, and our guests are:

• Prakash Kumar, the former CEO of the GST Network (GSTN), who oversaw many aspects of its development and rollout, and
• Charanya Lakshmikumaran, Executive Partner at Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan, who brings the practitioners’ perspective of navigating the transition and evolving compliance landscape.