In February 2019, the Government of India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology released a report titled “India’s Trillion-Dollar Digital Economy”, in an attempt to take stock of the massive digital transition that is underway in India and envision a roadmap for the coming years. The report posits that India is poised to create massive economic value, up to $1 trillion, in its digital economy by 2025 as well as empower citizens, with the permeation of new digital applications.This is based on the presumed expansion of a strong foundation of digital infrastructure and expansion of digital access, via the Digital India programme.
The Digital India programme was launched in 2015 to transform India into a digitally empowered society, with a knowledge economy. It is aimed to be inclusive, in narrowing the digital divide within the country, so that people across varied socio-economic strata of society can benefit from technological innovations. Currently, the Indian digital economy is generating around $200 billions in economic value.
At present, the digital consumer base in India is the second largest in the world and continues to grow at the second-fastest rate, among 17 leading economies, as per the report’s Country Digital Index. The report estimates that roughly half the potential value of $1 trillion by 2025 will come from new digital ecosystems, created across sectors as diverse as agriculture, healthcare, finance, e-governance, jobs etc.
According to the Union Minister for Law & Justice and Electronics & Information technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad, “India has nearly half a billion internet users and their number is rising rapidly in every part of the country. This will create a huge market for a host of digital services, platforms, applications, content, and solutions. Overall, India could potentially see a five-fold increase in economic value from digital transformation by 2025, representing an attractive opportunity for global and local businesses, start-ups, and innovators to invest in emerging technologies (like AI, blockchain, or drones) in ways that are customised to India’s needs.Working with all stakeholders, India can build on the digital dynamism we have already created to deepen, widen, and scale up its digital economy in the coming years, creating huge economic value and empowering millions of people across all walks of life.”
The rapid progress in internet infrastructure and usage can lead to accelerated progress across nine priority areas, based on national level scale-up of thirty digital themes. This report lays out a roadmap for Digital India 2.0 by outlining the enablers needed in those strategic areas to serve national priorities – energy, education and healthcare for all etc. and thereby, empower millions of entrepreneurs, workers, small and large businesses and consumers across urban and rural India.
The report also explores the steps required to move from a “business-as-usual” trajectory to create an economic value of $500-600 billion by 2025, towards the full potential of creating an economic value of $1 trillion by 2025. However, in order to capture the potential value of the Indian digital economy, concerted action and extensive collaboration is required between the government and private sector. This entails creating cross-cutting enablers – improvement in ease of operations for digital businesses, flow of capital and open-API ecosystem as well as supporting digital innovations through procurement by the state and strengthening centres of innovation and higher education across emerging technologies like AI.
All images and content sourced from press release.
India Outbound
April 4, 2019
source https://indiaoutbound.org/indias-digital-economic-potential/
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