Digital India – A plethora of opportunities for the IT sector

By Natarajan Radhakrishnan Today, we are in the midst of a third industrial revolution powered by digitization, the first two being driven by steam engine and electricity. Digital transformation is causing massive upheaval across industries and societies. When it comes to pace of technology advancement, we are firmly in the second half of the chess board where each subsequent advancement is massively more impactful than all previous advancements. Such large scale industrial transitions almost always are accompanied by significant benefits in productivity. For the past four years, we along with MIT Center for Digital Business are studying to understand digital transformation, its benefits and challenges, and industry leaders globally. We found that almost no business is sheltered from the competitive disruption wrought by the widespread adoption of digital technologies. Traditionally, Indian companies have been slow to adopt technology. However in recent months,companies across sectors are expressing interest in going ‘digital’. This trend has been further encouraged by the Government’s ‘Digital India’ program. A key area of investment under this initiative is to improve the government to citizen interface for various service deliveries. The government is serious about automated delivery of services and we can see it in the JAM paradigm – Jan Dhan Yojana for direct benefit transfers based on Aadhaar infrastructure and mobile interface for banking. The government has saved Rs 13,000 crores in cooking gas subsidies last fiscal putting technology to use and now proposes to extend technology to delivering MNREGS subsidies. [caption id=“attachment_2408422” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Natarajan Radhakrishnan[/caption] For technology companies, Digital India opens up a plethora of opportunities such as building the broadband infrastructure; creating identity solutions, payment systems, web or mobile based delivery structures and so on.Cybersecurity is another key area of focus. As commerce and banking go online and mobile, the threat of data leaks and hacks will only increase. It is imperative that organizations of all sizes invest significantly in securing their products and services. Healthcare is undergoing its own digital transformation globally, and in a country like India, telemedicine and remote health will likely play a huge role in driving universal accessibility to quality healthcare. Smart Cities are another big area of opportunity for technology companies as part of Digital India. Building out the infrastructure, getting various public sector departments online, providing a bouquet of services to citizens, all hold out significant potential for technology companies to work closely with the Government. As newer technologies like 3D Printing, robotics, artificial intelligence come to fore, the Digital India initiative offers a solid platform for preparing citizens, companies and the country as a whole to be prepared to benefit from them. Closely tied to the Digital India program is the ‘Make in India’ initiative. For India to transition to a digital future, it is imperative that a greater proportion of its consumption is serviced locally. The initiative can act as a significant push towards doing so. Early results are very positive, given the recent announcement of a USD 5 billion investment from electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn in Maharashtra and the new mobile phone assembly plant for Redmi in Sri City, Andhra Pradesh. However, success of the Digital India will be closely tied to the regulatory framework that accompanies it. The Government should ensure that these regulations create an enabling environment where private players come in, work with one another and create successful ecosystems. The role of the Government should accordingly be in line with the maxim of the current administration - Minimum Government, Maximum Governance. (The author is senior vice president and offshore head at Capgemini Consulting)