QR codes are normally associated with payments, menus and digital tickets.
At IIT Bombay, they are now being seen around the necks of some of the campus’s most familiar residents — its community dogs.
A viral video from the Powai campus shows dogs wearing collars fitted with QR codes that open individual digital profiles when scanned on a smartphone.
According to reports based on the video, the profiles can display information such as a dog’s unique identification number, vaccination certificate, medical information, usual campus territory and locations where the animal has previously been scanned.
The idea has quickly been described online as a kind of “Dog Aadhaar” — a humorous label for giving an individual community dog a persistent digital identity.
What happens when the QR code is scanned?
In the viral demonstration, a QR tag attached to a dog’s collar is scanned using a phone.
The linked profile reportedly displays the animal’s identification details along with recorded information about its vaccination status and health history.
A vaccination certificate is also visible in the demonstration.
On a large campus where several community dogs may look similar, a scannable identity can help students, staff and caretakers verify whether a particular dog has already received vaccination or treatment.
The profile also contains a location component.
Reports say previous places where a dog has been scanned can be logged, alongside its usual territory within the Powai campus.
However, this should not be confused with continuous GPS tracking.
A basic QR collar does not independently transmit a dog’s live location. The location history described in reports appears to depend on recorded or scan-based information rather than a satellite tracker constantly following the animal.
Digital records could reduce confusion around vaccination
One of the clearest practical advantages is medical record-keeping.
Community-dog management often depends on multiple groups — local caretakers, veterinarians, animal-welfare volunteers and institutional authorities.
A QR-linked profile can create a single reference point for vaccination dates, sterilisation status and treatment history, reducing duplication when different teams handle the same animals over time.
IIT Bombay’s own community-animal policy already calls for regular vaccination and sterilisation drives for community dogs and cats, coordinated through the institute’s Public Health Office with animal caretakers.
The QR system therefore fits naturally with an existing need for better identification and record continuity.
‘Dogesh Bhai’ becomes an internet celebrity
Beyond the practical welfare angle, the dogs’ digital profiles have become a social-media hit.
Users jokingly treated the QR identification as proof that the campus dogs had become official digital citizens.
One widely shared comment declared that “Dogesh Bhai is a citizen.”
Another joked that one dog had the “best Aadhaar picture so far.”
The reaction reflects the special place community dogs often occupy on Indian campuses, where students name them, recognise their territories and build long-term familiarity with them.
But the scale of the IIT Bombay rollout is still unclear
There is an important reporting limitation.
The viral story has been covered by multiple news outlets, but the reports appear to trace largely to social-media videos demonstrating the collars.
IIT Bombay press release specifying how many dogs have received the collars, when the programme formally began, who developed the software or whether the system is intended for every community dog on campus.
It would therefore be premature to call it a fully documented campus-wide rollout. What can be said confidently is that QR-enabled collars and digital profiles have been demonstrated on IIT Bombay community dogs.
IIT Bombay already has a formal community-animal policy
The institute’s wider approach to community animals provides useful context.
IIT Bombay’s 2024 policy on human-animal conflict states that the campus has a significant population of community dogs and cats.
The policy calls for regular vaccination and sterilisation, designated feeding areas and registration of people who feed community animals.
The policy also seeks to balance animal welfare with human safety through designated feeding areas and other controls. The QR collar idea therefore fits into a broader system of vaccination, sterilisation and community-animal management.
Mumbai is moving in the same direction
The IIT Bombay story comes at a time when QR-based identification is gaining traction elsewhere in Mumbai.
On August 20, 2026, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation announced QR-enabled reflective collars for vaccinated and sterilised community dogs under its rabies-control programme.
BMC is implementing that system with the Ridlan AI Foundation’s PawFriend.in platform.
The civic initiative links each QR code to a digital record containing vaccination, sterilisation and health information.
BMC says the digital registry can help distinguish dogs already vaccinated or sterilised from those still requiring intervention, showing that QR identification is moving beyond novelty and into formal municipal animal-management.
Could this work across India?
The viral IIT Bombay video prompted several users to ask whether similar tags could be used for community dogs in their own neighbourhoods.
Others suggested extending digital identification to locations such as railway stations, airports and public institutions.
A durable ID could help record anti-rabies vaccination, sterilisation, treatment and territory. But scaling such a system nationally would require more than printing QR codes.
Digital records need to be accurate and regularly updated.
Collars can fall off or become damaged.
Dogs may move between territories.
Access permissions and responsibility for maintaining the database also need to be defined.
A national system would therefore require cooperation among municipalities, veterinarians, animal-welfare organisations and local caregivers.
QR codes cannot replace vaccination or sterilisation
Technology can improve record-keeping, but it does not replace the interventions themselves.
The value of digital identification lies in connecting interventions over time. Vaccination, sterilisation and treatment still require real veterinary work; the QR code simply helps preserve continuity.
That is where the technology becomes more meaningful than the viral “Dog Aadhaar” nickname.
From familiar campus dog to identifiable individual
Community dogs may have no single owner, yet many people know their names, territories and histories. A digital profile makes some of that informal knowledge visible and portable.
For IIT Bombay’s dogs, the QR collars have created an entertaining social-media moment.
But behind the jokes is a serious animal-welfare idea: if a community dog can be reliably identified, its vaccination and medical history become easier to preserve.
That could help campuses and cities manage street dogs with better information rather than relying only on temporary markings and memory.
Whether IIT Bombay expands the system further remains to be seen.
But the reaction to the viral collars suggests that the concept has already achieved something important — making people imagine community dogs not as anonymous animals, but as identifiable individuals with their own health records, territories and place within a shared urban community.
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