OTP Phone Authentication for Indian Consumer Apps in Django

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 10:00:00 +0530

The first real product decision I made on this veterinary clinic-management platform — one I built solo for the Indian market back in 2019 — had nothing to do with clinics. It was this: the login is a phone number and a six-digit code, not an email and a password.

That sounds obvious now. It wasn’t the default I reached for. Django hands you username + password out of the box, djangorestframework-simplejwt assumes the same, and every tutorial I’d read wired auth that way. But the users were pet owners in Indian towns. A lot of them don’t have an email they check. All of them have a phone number, and they already expect “enter your number, get an OTP” because that’s how every app they use — payments, food, ride-hailing — logs them in. Phone is the identity here. Building email auth and bolting phone on later would have been solving the wrong problem first.

Jwt on Kuldeep Pisda

OTP Phone Authentication for Indian Consumer Apps in Django