Indian Food Informatics Data
Digital Public Infrastructure for the Indian Food EcosystemThe Indian Food Informatics Data (IFID) initiative is a research project conducted under the Interdisciplinary Systems Research Lab (iSRL). This project focuses on building a coordination layer for India's food systems, organising thousands of diverse ingredient expressions into stable, functional categories without erasing regional and cultural identity.
As a Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) project, IFID provides the architectural foundation necessary to enable interoperability between consumers, regulators, and industry. All non-sensitive core datasets, schemas, and mapping logics are released openly to foster a transparent and efficient food data ecosystem.
The framework maintains a position of analytical neutrality, functioning strictly as a value-agnostic infrastructure layer designed to facilitate systemic coordination — not as a mechanism for qualitative judgment or regulatory enforcement.
The project has evolved from a technical data-cleaning exercise into a robust infrastructure model. Our core philosophy is that diversity is not noise.
Rather than forcing linguistic convergence — standardisation through elimination — IFID utilises a layered architecture. This allows brands and regions to maintain their specific naming conventions while ensuring they coordinate seamlessly with national and global systems, including regulatory, trade, and health frameworks, through a shared coordination layer.
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Public Infrastructure
All outputs are released under the CC BY 4.0 International License to ensure accessibility for researchers, regulators, and industry stakeholders. Data is a permanent public asset.
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Coordination without Convergence
Enabling diverse expressions to map to stable identifiers while preserving regional specificity and cultural heritage. The goal is interoperability, not uniformity.
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Non-Adversarial Design
A balanced framework designed as a shared resource — serving Consumer Safety, Regulatory Efficiency, and Brand Operational Ease simultaneously, not in competition.
The framework is validated across four cross-disciplinary domains:
Creating stable identifiers for seamless data exchange across the supply chain — from farm to regulator to consumer.
Mapping fragmented label expressions to official standards — FSSAI, HSN, Codex Alimentarius — to reduce compliance friction without eliminating local identity.
Preserving regional identity and linguistic variety through a multi-layered identity-preservation mechanism. Diversity is infrastructure, not noise to be cleaned.
Implementing automated, audit-aware pipelines to manage food data at a national scale — transparent, explainable, and open to scrutiny.
All outputs from the IFID project. Open access under CC BY 4.0.