If you ever visit a supermarket, the sound of beeping scanners fills the air as many household items are being registered on the system to generate bills. One’s curious eyes see the cashier flipping the item around to find a white box with multiple black bars to scan, and there’s information about the product on the screen. These black bars, or barcodes, are scanned a billion times a day, not just in supermarkets, but also in distribution centres, logistics and courier services, hospitals, and travel; the list goes on.

To make all of this work seamlessly on a global scale, there needs to be a universal system behind these codes, and that’s where GS1 comes in. Founded in 1974, GS1 Global began as the U.S.-based Uniform Code Council to manage the Universal Product Code—the very first scan of a barcode at Marsh Supermarket in Ohio, USA. Now headquartered in Brussels, the non-profit is governed by a global board of leaders from multinationals, retailers, manufacturers, and member organisations. In essence, GS1 develops and manages global standards that ensure every barcode is unique, traceable, and readable across borders.

The global body’s national affiliate, GS1 India, was established in 1996 by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, along with CII, Ficci, Assocham, and other industry bodies such as IRDAI and the Insurance Information Bureau of India, academic partners such as IIT Delhi, and ecosystem players connected to ONDC.

It helps Indian businesses to generate globally valid barcodes, improve supply chain efficiency, ensure product authenticity, and comply with both domestic and export requirements. Although it doesn’t operate for profit, GS1 India sustains itself through membership and renewal fees paid by businesses using its barcoding system, with charges varying by company size. It also offers paid services such as DataKart access (a centralised database that stores information of all the products registered on it), product imaging tools, traceability solutions, and training workshops.

S. Swaminathan, CEO, GS1 India, likens the barcode as an analogy to Aadhaar, as both verify identity, one for products, and the other for citizens. “The difference is, our IDs are globally valid across 116 GS1 member countries,” he tells Fortune India in an exclusive interaction.

Each barcode carries a unique 13-digit number structured with remarkable precision. The first few digits represent the country code, just as “+91” helps to identify calls originating from India, products manufactured or registered in India carry a prefix of “890.” This ensures that anywhere in the world, from a retail shelf in Europe to a port in the Middle East, a barcode starting with “890” is instantly recognisable as an Indian product.

Raising the bar

But GS1 India’s aim is not only to create a registry of verified products; it is also to push micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to ensure global standards with all products and services they provide to facilitate a larger market. There are more than 50 million MSMEs in the country, which are considered the backbone of the Indian economy, and Swaminathan points out that these enterprises often lack the tools and teams needed to present or digitise their products for listing. “Today’s MSME is tomorrow’s large enterprise. We need to help them scale—not just technically but affordably,” he says. GS1 India works closely with the Ministry of MSME to spread awareness about the adoption of barcode technology and the importance of verification and marketability to amass a larger audience for their products. The Ministry of MSME provides reimbursements on GS1 barcode registration fees for the first three years, to help MSMEs adopt global standards and improve market access.

The mundane-looking barcode goes beyond the shelves; GS1 India’s reach extends to public infrastructure. It helped conceptualise and prototype FASTag, now used nationwide in toll collection systems. The underlying logic? Each vehicle, like each product, must have a unique, readable identifier.

Traceability is core to GS1 India’s value, and its importance is critical in healthcare. Through Unique Device Identification (UDI) developed with the International Medical Device Regulators Forum (IMDRF), pharmaceutical products and medical devices adapt to global compliance, as India is one of the largest exporters of generic drugs and imports 70% of medical devices. But challenges persist. “Healthcare is complex,” Swaminathan admits, saying that the country is lagging in implementation within Indian hospitals. Adding to the woes seen in healthcare are fraudulent insurance claims, but the organisation seems to have a solution for this. Through the ROHINI (Registry of Hospitals in Network of Insurance) initiative, which assigns a unique 13-digit identification number to every hospital in the insurance ecosystem, helps in reducing fraudulent claims and streamlining the insurance process through standardised data. This was developed in collaboration with the Insurance Information Bureau of India and backed by the IRDAI. “In healthcare, traceability isn’t a back-end function—it directly impacts patient safety,” says Swaminathan.

Traceability is possible and can be made transparent through how much data can be presented at a time. This is where the barcode evolves into a QR code—from 1D to 2D, which allows a code to hold more data—from manufacturing to expiry date, batch numbers to sustainability metrics. “2D codes are not just a tech upgrade. They’re a trust upgrade,” says Swaminathan. When posed with the question of the challenge of large-scale adoption of these 2D codes across all sectors, Swaminathan points out an advantage. "Unlike mature economies, we don’t have legacy systems holding us back. Many sectors are implementing barcodes for the first time—why not start with 2D?”

Casting the net wide

GS1 India’s expanding relevance to create an ecosystem that includes all sectors also reflects India’s growing stature in global trade and logistics. In May 2025, India hosted the GS1 Global General Assembly for the first time, unveiling its Vision 2030, laying out a roadmap to create a trusted, data-driven foundation for global commerce. “It was a historic moment,” says Swaminathan. “The fact that the global assembly was held in India shows the world recognises the scale at which our economy is digitalising and integrating into global supply chains," he says.

Though India is recognised as the largest consumer market, it also poses an alternative side—the counterfeit market. A joint Crisil–ASPA report estimates that 25–30% of all products sold in the country are counterfeit. This alarming figure spans across key sectors - apparel (31%), FMCG (28%), automotive parts (25%), pharmaceuticals (20%), consumer durables (17%), and agrochemicals (16%). This flood of fake products undermines consumer trust, jeopardises health and safety, and inflicts heavy financial losses on both industry and government.

Can barcodes alone stop this issue? Swaminathan admits it cannot, but the verified data behind them can. While most companies track products internally, external traceability remains a weak link. “Linking upstream suppliers with downstream distributors is the next frontier,” he says. As AI adoption grows, businesses will need reliable, standardised data across platforms. “We want GS1 to be the single source of truth for product data. No matter which model or marketplace you use, the facts should match,” he states.

Compliance is not the only demand that pushes accountability; it is the new and upcoming consumers. “Gen Z is digital-first. They want to know what they’re buying, where it came from, and whether it’s real,” Swaminathan says, highlighting that in future, traceability won’t be a backend feature, but rather a proof of trust.