)
Industry captains came out in huge numbers on Wednesday to sign up for the government's ambitious 'Digital India' project. Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged off the Digital India week, investment commitments worth more than Rs 4.5 lakh crore poured in from India Inc. A programme whose key components are e-governance, electronics manufacturing, cyber security and financial inclusion, Digital India is seen as one of the marquee projects of the Modi government.
Addressing a gathering of government officials and 'who's who' of India Inc, Modi warned a huge calamity might befall the nation if the digital divide was not bridged soon. Technology could be a catalyst for India's development, and the poorest of the poor should not be left behind, the prime minister said. "Investment of Rs 4.5 lakh crore has been committed for Digital India and there is employment (opportunity) for 1.8 million people," he added. (INDIA INC’S INVESTMENT PIPELINE)
The industrialists who spoke of their Digital India plans were Reliance Industries Chairman & Managing Director Mukesh Ambani, Tata Sons Chairman Cyrus Mistry, Wipro Chairman Azim Premji, Aditya Birla Group Chairman K M Birla, Bharti Enterprises Chairman & Group Chief Executive Sunil Mittal, Airbus Defence & Space CEO Bernhard Gerwert, Sterlite Technologies Non-executive Chairman Anil Agarwal, Delta Electronics CEO Ping Cheng, Hero Group Chairman, MD & CEO Pawan Munjal and Lava Mobile Chairman & MD Hari Om Rai.
Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries will invest over Rs 2.5 lakh crore, including in rollout of its wireless broadband infrastructure and manufacturing of mobile handsets. His brother Anil Ambani's Reliance Group has committed itself to investing about Rs 10,000 crore over the next few years in expanding its presence across digital platforms, data centres, cloud computing and the telecom sector.
During his address, Modi also highlighted cyber security concerns, referring to those as a "bloodless war". He called upon the huge talent of India's technology workforce to come with a solution to this global problem. He said it was necessary to deal with problems like corruption, to help provide transparent and efficient governance, and to bridge the rich-poor divide.
"We have to move from e-governance to m-governance. M-governance does not mean Modi governance. It means mobile governance," the prime minister said, adding e-governance stood for easy governance, as well as economical governance. He reiterated that India's bill for electronics imports was the largest after that for petroleum products, and said manufacturing domestically would not only help lower the import bill but will also make the country feel more secure, as the products in use will be "Hindustani".
Industrialists like Lava's Rai and Sterlite's Agarwal answered the clarion call for domestic manufacturing. While Agarwal said his company would invest Rs 40,000 crore towards building an LCD panel fabrication unit in India which would likely reduce imports by 20 per cent, Delta Electronics pledged an investment of $500 million over the next 10 years. Microsoft global CEO Satya Nadella, who could not personally attend the event due to prior commitment, said in a video message that his company was bringing its cloud services - Microsoft Azure, Dynamics and Office 365 - to local data centres in India "to accelerate cloud innovation, connect every Indian and every Indian business to the world through our global hyper-scale cloud."
Hemant Joshi, partner at consultancy firm Deloitte in India, said this (Digital India), with the vision of internet and connectivity for all through a spend of about $18 billion, could create a multiplier effect of five to 10 times on GDP - of $90 to $180 billion. "Through the fibre-optic backbone connecting 600,000 villages, challenges of urbanisation can be mitigated by creating opportunities in rural areas and providing access to opportunities... This has a potential to create interplay of various industries leading to big multiplier on GDP growth."
Mukesh Ambani also said that a Jio Digital India Startup Fund would be created for entrepreneurship in cities and towns.
Modi said the government was willing to do anything for start-ups in the country.
Ambani added his group company Reliance Jio Infocomm was working with leading device manufacturers, encouraging them to make smartphones and internet devices in India at affordable prices. "We will give them an assured offtake through our retail system," he added. Jio was also setting up a new nationwide distribution network that would enable over 150,000 small electronic retailers to sell and service smartphones and internet devices, he said.
