13.6.17

India plans a Digital Reboot


The who's who of the Indian technology and startup industry will convene for a brainstorming session in the National Capital as the government tries to chalk out a blueprint for the $1-trillion digital economy of India. Those who have confirmed include Rishad Premji of Wipro, Pravin Rao of Infosys, Sachin Bansal of Flipkart, Kunal Bahl of Snapdeal and Rajan Anandan from Google. Amit Agarwal of Amazon and Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm have also confirmed their presence.

Union minister for electronics and information technology Ravi Shankar Prasad had first announced the intention to call for a meeting of the industry stalwarts last month.

The idea is to seek contribution and participation of the private sector as the country hopes to increase the size of its digital economy from the current $400 billion to $1 trillion over the next five years.The meeting will be chaired by Prasad and minister of state for electronics and IT.

The government has set a target of $1 trillion digital economy by 2022.

Ideas and inputs will be sought from the people present (the government has tried to restrict the group to 20 people) on how to increase the impact of digital on various sectors such as health, education and financial inclusion.Jobs growth will also be a key focus area. Driving innovation will be a priority, developing solutions for India and exploring public private partnerships will be some of the areas of discussions.

Post the meeting, the government will cull out the workable ideas from the discussion and may form a working group to act on them since it may require intervention of different government ministries and departments apart from IT.

S Gopalakrishnan, cofounder of Infosys, industry veteran Saurabh Srivatava, NIIT chairman Rajendra Pawar and Microsoft India president Anant Maheshwari have also been invited. Top officials from IBM, Tech Mahindra, Quickheal, phone maker Lava, Practo and Panasonic along with heads of industry associations Nasscom and IAMAI are also expected to join the gathering.

The idea behind inviting industry captains instead of just industry associations is be cause, “these people have been winners in their respective fields.“

The government has tried to keep a good mix of people from traditional IT sector as well as from new economy such as e-commerce, startups and fintech.

Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had said that he has decided to call a meeting of all the major industry players to give a road map about the promising prospects of the emerging $1-trillion digital economy. He had said that the government will unfurl in front of them all the prospects, as the government sees, and also seek their feedback on how they can contribute towards it. 

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