RBI Wins 2025 Digital Transformation Award For Technological Excellence
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been awarded the Digital Transformation Award 2025 by Central Banking, London, UK, on Thursday.
The recognition comes in honour of RBI’s successful implementation of innovative digital solutions that have radically transformed its internal and external operations.
The Reserve Bank of India has been selected for the Digital Transformation Award 2025 by Central Banking, London, UK.
RBI was awarded and recognised for its initiatives, including Pravaah and Sarthi systems, that have been developed by in-house developer team. The awards…
— ReserveBankOfIndia (@RBI) March 14, 2025
The RBI’s in-house developed systems, Pravaah and Sarthi, were key factors in the award, as they have significantly reduced reliance on paper-based processes and reshaped the way the central bank manages its workflows and regulatory processes.
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RBI’s digital transformation journey, spearheaded by Shailendra Trivedi, Chief General Manager of the RBI’s IT Department, has been marked by two key initiatives.
The first, Sarthi, went live in January 2023, digitising all internal workflows and enabling secure document storage and sharing across the bank.
The system has helped over 10,000 active users streamline their daily operations, improving collaboration, automating processes, and enhancing data analysis.
It was said that Sarthi overthrew around 90 years of paper-based practices, enabling the RBI to boost operational efficiency and reduce manual intervention.
Building on this success, Pravaah, launched in May 2024, facilitated a major step forward in digitising external regulatory submissions to the RBI.
The system allows more than 70 different regulatory applications to be filed and processed digitally, linking with the Sarthi database to ensure smooth and transparent processing across RBI’s numerous departments.
With more than 2,000 applications filed through Pravaah by the end of 2024, the system has already shown a remarkable 80% increase in the number of monthly submissions.
The awards committee highlighted the RBI’s efforts to develop these systems in-house as a key factor in its success.
By leveraging its existing IT team to build both Sarthi and Pravaah, the RBI saved time, money, and resources, avoiding the need for external vendors.
This internal approach allowed for faster implementation and reduced costs while ensuring that the systems were custom-tailored to meet the bank’s unique needs.
Another point of praise from the awards committee was the enhanced transparency brought about by these digital tools.
Pravaah, for instance, provides RBI managers with dashboards that allow them to track the progress of regulatory applications in real time, offering clear visibility into processing timelines, something that was previously impossible with paper-based systems.
The committee also noted that the ability for applicants to track their own submissions has fostered a sense of accountability and efficiency within the organisation.
The rollout of Sarthi and Pravaah represents a broader cultural shift within the RBI. These systems have not only improved operational efficiency but also made the staff more open to adopting digital tools.
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With more than 10,000 active users and 5,000 logins daily, Sarthi has already been proven to be a success. Meanwhile, the successful migration of tens of millions of records from legacy applications to these new digital systems demonstrated the RBI’s commitment to a future-ready, agile infrastructure.
RBI’s top management, including former governor Shaktikanta Das, has strongly supported these initiatives, recognising the importance of making the organisation more agile, cost-effective, and future-proof.
Trivedi, who played a crucial role in the development of both systems, emphasises that the work does not end with these achievements. The RBI is already working on ambitious plans for cloud integration and new data centers to further enhance its digital capabilities.
(With inputs from Central Banking)
