IIT Hyderabad, ISRO, India Post create Digipin, a digital address system for India

Aiming to clean up India’s chaotic address system, IIT Hyderabad, India Post, and ISRO’s National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) have teamed up to launch DIGIPIN -- a new digital address system designed to simplify how locations are identified across the country, from city apartments to remote villages and even offshore sites.

Let’s face it -- Indian addresses are messy. Unstructured descriptions, local landmarks, and vague house numbers often confuse both people and delivery systems. DIGIPIN fixes this by converting GPS coordinates into short, human-readable codes -- basically a smarter, more precise version of your regular PIN code.

Unlike traditional codes that only point to a general area, DIGIPIN gives a precise digital address that can be accessed using a smartphone with GPS and a high-resolution map app. It works



offline, doesn’t collect personal data, and is built to handle everything from home deliveries to emergency services and government schemes.

DIGIPIN was developed by a sharp team from IIT Hyderabad’s Department of Electrical Engineering. The project was led by Prof Soumya Jana, Dr Lakshmi Prasad Natarajan, and Dr Shashank Vatedka, with Tarandeep Singh, a former MTech (AI) student.

Their aim? To create a system that works anywhere in India -- easy to use, machine-friendly, and readable by humans. They used a geohashing algorithm that compresses location data into short codes, which can be shared, stored, or even printed as QR codes.

The result is an open-source, privacy-safe, and offline-friendly tool that can generate digital addresses with just a smartphone — no internet or complex setup needed.