Digital economy to contribute $1 trillion to India’s GDP by 2025

22 September 2020: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies are expected to play a major role in achieving India’s vision of making digital economy reach US$ 1 trillion of GDP by 2025, says Dr. Rajendra Kumar, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and IT. He was addressing ‘A(I)ndia Conclave 2020 – Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Future Excellence’, organized by FICCI, jointly with MeitY.

In his address, Dr Kumar said, “We have the vision to take the digital part of the economy from currently, 7-8 percent of GDP to over 20 percent in the next 5 years.  AI and other emerging technologies will play a key role and without this infusion, we cannot move to raise this contribution to that level in the next 5 years. For this, the involvement of all stakeholders is needed.”

He further stated that the government has recently undertaken the National Digital Public platform initiative involving various ministries. Over 10 key ministries are part of this initiative to ensure all their diverse applications and schemes are integrated over one common platform.

According to Abhishek Singh, CEO, NeGD, MyGov & Digital India Corporation, MeitY AI and emerging technologies have the potential to create more jobs.  He said that global partnership is another key area and India has joined the global partnership on AI as a founding member along with other leading countries.

In the words of Dr. Amit Kumar Pandey, President, CTO and CSO, Hanson Robotics: “Robotics and AI can help in reaching the grassroots level of personalized solutions. In India, we need to augment and supplement people’s abilities.”

And, Virat Bhatia, Chairman, FICCI ICT and Digital Economy Committee added: The paradigm shift in the economic relationship of mankind will be witnessed in the form of accelerated adoption of communication technologies and AI in particular.