The word ‘digital’ was mentioned 35 times, and ‘tech’ 26 times, by finance minister
Nirmala Sitharaman in her
Budget speech. “Promoting digital economy & fintech, technology-enabled development” was mentioned early on in the speech among her three major goals. For India’s IT and technology industry, this could be a big opportunity.
Deloitte India partner P N Sudarshan said digitisation will be the backbone for new investments in education, healthcare, agriculture, banking, payments, and also to streamline government procurement & payments. “Announcement for deep-tech/sunrise sectors in terms of policy support, light-touch regulations, funding support, etc, seems seminal,” he said.
KPMG partner and head (digital consulting) Akhilesh Tuteja said the Budget has set in motion the impetus for a foundational change in transforming the digital economy. “The e-passport is a new digital asset and drones-as-a-service will create new offerings leveraging new AI/ML models. ,” he said.
Mindtree CEO Debashis Chatterjee said the move to grant infrastructure status to data centres will be a game-changer for India, and initiatives such as digital rupee and e-passports based on futuristic technologies will benefit the tech industry.
TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan said the initiative to introduce a digital rupee in the form of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) is an extremely futuristic decision.