India is taking an important step towards creating a more integrated digital ecosystem for skills, learning and employment.
The NITI Aayog Official Report titled “Reimagining Skilling for Viksit Bharat@2047” released in August 2026 proposes a “Digital Skills Passport” as a key system enabler for lifelong learning. The proposed Skills Passport, anchored on APAAR ID, would bring together verified credentials, skills and work experience, supported by State-level Skills Digital Registries and Exchanges.
Interestingly, the report places Skill Skore alongside the Digital Skills Passport. Skill Skore is envisaged as a “Skill and future readiness score”, while the Skills Passport would provide stackable, verifiable credentials for work and skills. The report also proposes MyCV for QR-based CVs, Skill DX as the data-exchange layer, and Workfolio as a digital portfolio and hiring network for blue-collar workers.
If this architecture is implemented at scale, I believe it could have a significant impact on the Background Verification (BGV) industry. When verified education credentials, skills and employment experience become available through an integrated digital ecosystem, some of the traditional manual verification activities undertaken by BGV companies could potentially become less necessary.
This could also have implications for specialised employment-verification platforms such as OnGridid and eLockr, which have built businesses around digitising and automating employment verification. Their future opportunity may increasingly depend on how they adapt to an ecosystem where verified employment and skills data could become available through a broader national digital infrastructure.
The Digital Skills Passport is therefore not just a skilling initiative. It could potentially reshape the entire ecosystem around credentials, employability, recruitment and background verification in India. An interesting development to watch as India builds its skilling and employability architecture for Viksit Bharat@2047. (Report Available here: https://www.niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/2026-08/Reimagining-Skilling-for-Viksit-Bharat-2047.pdf)
National Forum for Learning, Innovation and Growth (NFLIG)
