Chandrasekhar highlights three-pronged approach to promote use of technology
The Government expects to form partnerships with the Private Sector in areas not just limited to soliciting business, business development or advocacy, but even in areas of future technology development or strategic areas where India as a whole creates competencies like artificial intelligence, cyber security and semiconductors among others, said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology, and Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, at the inaugural session of CII FutureTech 2021.
The Government, he said, is going to roll out a five-year strategic perspective plan, detailing the competency and capabilities that needs to be developed for realizing these ambitions.
“This is the time to reset our ambitions and re-imagine the future in very different ways from pre-COVID era. The post-COVID era provides very different opportunity framework that is at play today for companies in India,” he told the session.
Chandrasekhar highlighted the Government’s three-pronged approach to promote use of technology in the country focuses on improving governance and transforming lives of people, expanding digital economy and creating more opportunities and creating strategic capabilities in certain areas of technology.
“The velocity of the train we are trying to compete with should not bother us. We are in a position to leapfrog and move at a rate much faster than any other country because this Government is fully committed for India’s roadmap to be a significant tech player in the post-COVID era,” assured the Minister.
Under a PPP project, we must look at building an ERP solution for MSMEs at reasonable price to facilitate digital adoption especially when quite a few MSME have started extending their customer base across the border as well,” added Kris Gopalakrishnan, Past President, CII, Chairman, CII Digital Council, and Co-founder, Infosys Limited suggested.
He also highlighted some key recommendations shared by CII Task Force of Digital Infrastructure on setting-up of a ‘Broadband Infrastructure Fund’ for efficient Digital Infrastructure Rollout.
CP Gurnani, Managing Director and CEO, Tech Mahindra Limited, pointed out that technology has now become a glue for citizens and especially MSMEs to bring in inclusiveness across all sections of the society.
“India would need to specially emphasize on much larger high-end technologies like quantum computing, better connectivity, Cloud and AI as these have now become a fabric for various sectors,” said Gurnani in a CII release on the FutureTech Week on 19 Oct 2021.
India has previously never realized a need for backward integration of semi-conductors and hence there is an urgent need to create a taskforce on how to bring in semi-conductors in India, he stressed.
Every business must now innovate through exponential technology like Hybrid cloud, AI, Quantum, underlined Sandip Patel, Chairman, CII National AI Forum and Managing Director, IBM India and SA.
As an action plan for the decade, three critical priorities that will elevate the role of science in India’s road to become a trillion-dollar economy has been laid out by MeitY. The priorities include Creating a national Strategic Computing reserve which would offer computing power and expertise in the next crisis, Launching a national Charter to pull public and private investments to drive technology for all and Accelerating Government’s investment in science and technology research to become an innovation led economy.
CII organized FutureTech Week with support from Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, from 19-27 October 2021. FutureTech Week have components of Digital Infrastructure Summit, Digital Transformation Summit, AI Conference, Smart Manufacturing Summit, DX Secure Summit, Future Business Summit, Digital Gaming Summit etc. #technology #investment #digital /fiinews.com
