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The stage is all set to create long term sustainable growth and reposition India on the global map with strategies like minimum government, maximum governance; empowering the poor; digital India and relationship building with Asian nations. Government plans to take digitalization to the next level by implementing the digitalization of agriculture & PDS data, enabling e-governance & m-governance, facilitating the National Rural Internet and Technology Mission, using IT for real time information gathering, and the digitization of all government files.Digital India, India as the Innovation Hub, Next Gen Infrastructure, Enhance Ease of Doing Business, and Revive Manufacturing and the government is planning to invest $11 billion in the key focus areas to drive the next wave of technology-backed infrastructure growth. The key focus is to create national optical-fibre networks and to build 100 smart cities with high-speed digital highways along with national solar missions and national gas grids.
While the Social media is a new marketing platform for all types of businesses, a company's success is still often dictated by the face of the company. Whether it's the CEO or Business head, the person representing the company is well aware about the industry and much more. People feel more obligated to remember a person’s name than a company’s name. As the face of the company, you instill trust in your customers and provide them with insight into the personality of your operations.
There are various reactions from the corporate world when we tried to ask about their perception on their organization moving towards digitization and the bottleneck they face.
Monali Handa, Director-Marketing, NComputing
Since its inception in India in 2008 till date, the key problem that NComputing as a company has set out to address has been: “How can computing benefits be percolated down to millions of students and the underprivileged workforce across the world, who do not have the privilege of having access to computers due to budget constraints faced by organizations and institutions that they are a part of.”
Currently, NComputing has association with a majority of the state governments in India. Some of the key implementations made by NComputing in India include 77,465 seats in 15,493 schools across Gujarat; 60,000 seats in 6,000-plus government schools in Andhra Pradesh; another 60,000 seats in Punjab; 58,500 seats in 2,622 government schools of Haryana; 18,000 seats across 1,800 learning centres of Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited (MKCL); over 15,000 seats in Uttar Pradesh; another 15,000 seats in Bihar; 3,200 seats in Assam, and many others.
In India, the key challenges/impediments in the way of achieving 100% computer enablement/digitization include limited funds for setting up and managing IT labs/infrastructure, limited staff, acute power shortage, dependence on power backup systems such as UPSs/in-house generators and related costs, poor connectivity due to location in rural.
Ankesh KumarDirector-product management (Channel, IT Solution) & marketing, Emerson Network Power, India
With the increasing smartphone penetration and the growing Internet users, India has moved at a phenomenal pace towards going mobile and digital. “Digital India” will help the government to improve their communication with the people living in far-off villages and in helping them draw benefits from government schemes. From installing network infrastructure facilities to powering, supervising, tracking and analyzing it, Emerson Network Power has the experience and resources to install and handle such a huge demand. With solutions enabling e-governance to e-commerce, e-banking to health services, Emerson has the vision and expertise to help the government deliver on its “Digital India Vision by 2019”.
As the vision of Digital India is about harnessing the power of IT and creating a digital platform including government, infrastructure, retail, jobs and manufacturing and several other sectors, the first and foremost challenge is the massive scale of the project and the diversity of operations. The entire project due to its sheer scale will need to take into consideration several aspects of conceptualizing, designing, and implementing the project in its entirety. It would have to factor into adoption of standards, interoperability at various levels, utilization of various technology platforms, security considerations, managing massive loads of data and finally optimizing the network infrastructure required to do so. Training government officials on understanding, operating and using the data with ease will also call for sufficient efforts in the move towards digitization.
Bhaskar Bakthavatsalu, Regional Director, India and SAARC, Check Point Technologies
The endeavour is one that is both exciting and promising to India as a nation, helping the community in a number of ways. Since this transformation will change most physical transactions to digital processes, adoption of IT will embrace the whole community and individuals with different computing intellect. In such a situation, areas such as security and privacy in cyberspace will come to the forefront as key challenges. By virtue of leading-edge technology innovation in the form of Software Blades
, we offer our customers expertise in handling the expanding scope of attacks launched.
We believe in the power of collaboration at every step of our journey and ensure this is done with different stakeholders in different ways. We believe this is critical in order to meet a target. It has been our constant endeavour to work very closely with them and their environments, monitoring the networks of 900 organizations, analyzing over 100 million events from about 1,000 security gateways, and 1,20,000 hours of data, thus keeping alive the power of partnership constantly.
In a country like ours, digitization is not an easy task. While policy-makers at the Centre should lay down the right objectives and build a favourable environment, it is vital that the potential of high-end IT-enabled platforms be leveraged in a carefully planned way to make a Digital India and up-to-the-minute governance a reality. Proper infrastructure, budgets, education and integration among other areas is fundamental. In a country that has 30 official languages, it is vital to ensure people get seamless access to services while making sure systems do not fall to malicious intentions. For this, we need continuous cyber intelligence. In this space, Check Point has carried out significant deployments in the form of SensorNet, Threat Cloud and now IntelliCloud.
Govind Rammurthy, MD & CEO, eScan
We really appreciate the Digital India initiative started by Modi Government that aims for e-governance, to have broadband in 2.5 lakh villages by 2019, Wi-Fi in 2.5 lakh schools as well as all universities across the country, Wi-Fi hotspots in public spaces in the cities and tourist centres. Moreover, the National Digital Literacy Mission intends to make 10 lakh people digitally literate by the end of 2015.
As we take efforts to make India digital, we need to ensure a safe computing experience amidst evolving cyber-threats to the increasing IT users across the country.
We, being an IT security solution vendor, have been constantly redefining the Information Security landscape by developing advanced and innovative technologies as well as solutions which not only protect digital devices and IT infrastructure but also ensure security to data.
The key challenges we currently face are:
a. Infrastructure: The government needs to work towards a goal of broadband access across the length and breadth of the nation, for faster progress.
b. Laws: Our cyber laws are still not mature enough for the public in general to trust e-commerce and/or sensitive data backup on the cloud. Once a strong bill is created and mandated, about crimes those can be perpetrated using Internet as the backbone, a higher level of consumer confidence will be created.
c. Anti-Piracy: We need very strong anti-piracy laws and bodies, to ensure protection of IPRs. This will ensure that industries whose bread and butter depends creativity and talent, can use Cloud services for easy, reliable and far-reaching access.
Himanshu Gupta, Deputy Director, ZTE India
As a technology player, the new wave of digitalization is very exhilarating for us. Every day, new changes are coming up with the Mr Narendra Modi-led government in terms of technology, which seems to be quite promising for India. Digitalization will enable the government in meeting the public needs and demands in a more convenient fashion and vice versa.
We, at ZTE, see this phenomenon as a chance to grow in the Indian market. ZTE has always considered going digital as an important aspect of what the future has in store for us. A smartphone for every Indian with a fast Internet connection will not only enable the people but also drive growth in the country faster.
Since India is still majorly an agrarian economy, the prospect of being a fully digitized nation is a bit futuristic. Even today, more than half the population cannot access the Internet. In order to make India a digitized nation, we first need to focus on building the right infrastructure, and on educating the people how to best use it.
Hitesh Shah, Drector, Channel Sales, BlackBerry, India
Recently government of India announced the ‘Digital India programme.’ The program seeks to end the huge divide between rural and urban India and the digital haves or have-nots. This program is already being touted as the government’s master stroke in creating a 21st century India, with the government gearing up to offer better services, foster innovation, generate more jobs for the citizens of India while leveraging technology as the critical leveler. The government has further embarked on a plan to build 100 smart cities, urban fiber optic-connected digital clusters that will provide next-generation services to its residents, thereby transforming the dreams of a digital India in reality.
Mobile phones and technology will play a significant role in driving this digitization process. M2M (Machine 2 Machine) technologies will be vital to realize this vision of digital and smart cities, as well enhancing the delivery of healthcare and education services.
For any country to transform into a digital prowess, there are 2 key elements that would need to be taken care of- initiation and execution.
Initiation- This stage could involve challenges around lack of awareness around the threats and opportunities of digital transformation. Other challenges are lack of proper financial impetus and slow regulatory reforms.
Execution- The lack of a digitally literate population could pose a bottleneck to begin with. At this level, it is necessary to create policies and frameworks that would drive technology-enabled processes and delivery. At the moment, in India, this work is in progress.
Manish Sharma, Managing Director, Panasonic India
Panasonic has always envisioned becoming a Green Innovation company achieving both business growth and environmental contributions. While the concepts of sustainable smart cities are new for countries across the world, the Japanese Government and Panasonic have made pioneering efforts to create a sustainable, self-reliant and smart city – the Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town (SST). The company’s aim and mission when it comes to town-creation is to structure a smart town based on people's lifestyles, designed for the way people live. We are now actively developing the concepts and processes behind Fujisawa SST into other projects around the world. Especially in India, with the new government’s enhanced focus on creating 100 smart cities, the brand can bring together its inherent strength of innovation and sustainability, combined with its product and solutions prowess will help create world’s most advanced, self-reliant and innovative smart cities in India. Such cities will be a great exercise in building a sustainable, low-impact living, in addition to providing zero-emission smart houses. Our aim is to bring energy to life in a sustainable smart town that will open its doors to a new age of hope.
The Central Government needs to comply with international carbon emission targets and cities play a major role in the production of emissions. As energy needs are growing, pollution increases, supply needs to be managed proficiently and critical infrastructure needs to be protected. Also, public safety and security is increasingly posing a challenge and people are continuing to use unsecured Wi-Fi hotspots to access personal information (e-mail, social network, Internet banking) and exposing themselves to various types of attacks.
Manoj Khadkikar, HOD for Channel Solutions Group, Zicom
The Internet of Things (IoT) has enabled connectivity in a big way. Every device is now connected with other devices and they are all together linked to the Command Control Centre. Zicom is helping this process so that more and more devices become automated and the vast data empower these devices to predict ahead of things that are going to happen. This, in turn, makes them more preemptive and preventive rather than simply reactive which was the case hitherto. So, from the security perspective, digitization augurs well, and Zicom is offering security solutions both directly and indirectly to many of these projects.
Making India digital is a humongous task and therefore challenges en route are inevitable. Some of the challenges like inadequate infrastructure, lack of education and necessary skills, economic and linguistic barriers are all known bottlenecks. But the major bottleneck is that everything is implemented at the government level – and not at the ground level. Even though the people are aware that they can play an important role in enhancing from the security standpoint, they are not acting swiftly. They know the need but are not acting on it. But I do hope that things will improve in the years to come.
Rahul Agarwal, Executive Director-Commercial Business Segment, Lenovo India
India, with 243 million internet users, is a striking example of the Internet’s growth potential. Even with a rapid rate of adoption, a major part of our population is currently not connected. Meanwhile, there is growing evidence that access to the Internet can boost GDP, jobs and incomes. The Internet currently contributes 1.6 per cent of India’s GDP, and McKinsey & Co. has projected that this could go up to 2.8–3.3 per cent by 2015 (Online and Upcoming: The Internet’s Impact on India, 2012). The upcoming rollout of the Government’s ambitious Digital India initiative is expected to positively impact the current levels of Internet penetration, thus enhancing and improving educational, economic and social development of the country.
As a growing brand with a consistent focus on innovation, we are confident that this new e-governance programme will propel our growth in the government and education verticals.
Rajesh Janey, President for EMC's India & SAARC, EMC
Today, the digital universe in India is nearly doubling in size every two years and is bound to multiply 9-fold between 2014 and 2020. This explosion is majorly caused by proliferation of devices such as PCs and smartphones due to the decline in the cost of technology and an increase in Internet, and uptake of services such as social media, and developments like city-wise video surveillance, and digitization of TV, among others. Within enterprises, it is driven by BYOD, use of technologies like Web 2.0, virtualization, etc and applications like CRM, ERP and database analytics, etc. Also, there has been an increase in the adoption of IT to address changing consumer and policy expectations, growing cyber-threats, and drive greater competitiveness for business in a flat economy. EMC is working with various stakeholders to reach the ultimate goal of digitizing India, and at an enterprise level by providing better solutions across storage, server and network level which lowers the operational costs and diverts their budgets into revenue generation projects. EMC provides customizable storage and networking solutions that would help and organization grow without having to worry about the security of the information the organization is trying to protect.
Technology adoption is a catalyst not only for growth among India’s m
icro, small and medium enterprises, but for the growth of the Indian economy as a whole. Also, according to the EMC’s Privacy Index report, India is a relative new comer to the Internet world and, thus, everyone is lapping it up. There is greater willingness to share and trade information for better services from consumer, and e-commerce sites. We need to take care of small yet grave issues such as of password renewals and of reading all online documents carefully to avoid cybercrimes, and unfortunate incidents of hacking as well. Once such issues are addressed, I am sure India would be fully digitized in a short span of time.
Dr Alok Bharadwaj, Executive Vice-President, Canon India
The demand for document digitization is on the rise across various sectors, including pharmaceutical, healthcare and others. The demand includes various records for different departments like HR and R&D, legal and Government compliance documents, etc. The demand has also been augmented by the increase in the importance of Information Security. Organizations are looking for value-driven solutions for continuous process improvements within business and government. There is a high demand for managed integration of office functions. Also, the transition from CapEx (Capital Expenditure) to OpEx (Operational Expenditure) has been so well embraced by the Indian industry that Canon envisions the entire B2B imaging market shifting towards it. To bridging this gap, Canon Business Service acts as an integral part of the industry and will play a vital role in the Government and corporate sector in India. Canon has also recently launched Central Print room services which will enable companies to standardize their print material, including brochures, posters, danglers, etc.
Tushar Sighat, Executive Director & CEO, D-Link (India) Ltd.
The present Government’s initiative of Digital India is truly commendable. Further, it has also allocated exclusive budgets for “Digital India” initiative to set up broadband network in villages and promote local manufacturing of hardware and Indian software products. With this, the present Government has truly recognized the significance of a strong IT Infrastructure and its contribution towards developing India into a Superpower.
As an organization specializing in network connectivity devices, it has been our constant endeavour to promote broadband penetration across the length and breadth of the country. Now with government’s support, we look forward to reaching out to the masses with our wide product portfolio that are reliable, affordable and easy to use. Moving ahead, we are also committed to developing products based on “green” technology that will prepare our customers to an alluring new era of ultimate connectivity.
One of the key objectives of this initiative is to connect all gram panchayats by broadband Internet, promote e-governance and transform India into a connected knowledge economy. However, one of the main obstacles at this point is the backbone of the project, i.e. National Optic-Fibre Network project (NOFN) which is running behind schedule. Hence, it is imperative for the Government to bring in synergy between both the projects.
For a project of this magnitude, it is essential for the Government to first work towards building state-of-the-art IT infrastructure that can efficiently support the programme. Further, IT literacy in the country is another crucial aspect that needs to be looked into, as people across all stratas of the society should be able to optimally benefit from digitization. However, lack of computer knowledge will deter the citizen from getting benefited.
Ranjit Nambiar, Director of Sales, IAM, HID Global
HID Global has structured its portfolio to meet the demand in a number of emerging/future market growth areas. The foundation is the iCLASS SE platform powered by Seos, which simplifies how identities are created, used and managed across a broad range of applications, and provides compatibility with microprocessor-based credentials, including cards, smartphones and other mobile devices. We also are extending our portfolio through strategic acquisitions such as IdenTrust for secure authentication solutions, and Lumidigm, which provides the opportunity for HID Global to extend proven biometric technology beyond finger- and hand-based applications into iris, facial and other smart imaging systems.
We also see new market opportunities as the industry moves in the following directions:
Beyond cards to smartphones: Users are increasingly mobile and bringing their own devices (BYOD) into the organization’s environment, using smartphones, laptops and tablets to access the resources they need. This will make it possible for smartphones to grant access to everything from the door, to data, to the cloud.
Beyond readers to “tap-in” access convenience: As users are able to carry more types of credentials on a smart card or phone, they will be able to simply tap them to a personal tablet or laptop for authenticating to a network.
Beyond Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technology to simplified solutions for higher security: The advent of Commercial Identity Verification (CIV) cards enables organizations to implement strong authentication for accessing data and opening doors, without having to purchase certificates from a trust anchor or pay annual maintenance fees as they do with PKI-based government Personal Identity Verification (PIV) cards.
Sanjeev Sehgal, Managing Director, SparshSecurity
The Government’s initiative of “Making India Digital” programme seeks to transform India into a digital empowered society and knowledge economy. Taking “Making India Digital” initiative further, Sparsh would like to lead the Digital Surveillance Space by continuous innovation and offering technically advanced product in the market. Due to our focus on technology, various global leaders in electronic security have partnered with us to further advance the technology and bring these products to market. Sparsh’s vision is to put India on the global map for designing and manufacturing high-quality and technologically advanced electronic security equipment.
The key challenges for the country to be fully digitalized are related to infrastructure, security, cyber laws and training space. India lacks in IT infrastructure system like data center which are key aspects of digitalization. We still are not at par with our global counterparts in terms of secure and impenetrable networks, which put our critical sites of various government establishments at risk. Also, India needs a proper training programme in place for all government officials to understand the data availablity, its protocols of access and protocols of security.
Yuji Nakata, MD, Konica Minolta India
We are in the digital imaging space, and we constantly promote digitization. Digitization definitely allows people to consume content in small doses and moreover enables one document to be simultaneously processed on multiple platforms.
Digital print is forecasted to grow at 23% CAGR in India. Cloud usage will grow. All our printers are cloud enabled. One can access cloud directly from our device panel to view, download and print.
We will certainly contribute to make India digital with world-class technology and solutions of Konica Minolta.
Many processes are still manual and paper-based here and, therefore, digitization is still taking time to evolve. There is an increasing trend to move to digitization of record management.
E-governance initiatives will help to promote digitization. Improving literacy level and availability of digital content and interface in the local language will be the key drivers.
Sunil Sharma, VP Sales & Operations, India & SAARC, Cyberoam
Before we can fully leverage the advantages that emerge from becoming a digital economy, there is a need to set the vision to keep the momentum secure and alive. Our R&D efforts have always kept pace with the changing role of security and the way it applies in an increasingly Internet-driven business environments. We are promoting greater awareness and undertaking more initiatives on thought leadership. By reaching out to IT and security decision-makers and government organizations, we are creating greater equity to ensure the role of security is understood well for the changing times.
For India, becoming a digital economy is an accomplishment that will serve as a critical socio-economic intervention, benefiting millions of people, for essentially it is about bridging the digital divide. However, before this vision is realized, the key bottlenecks in the quality of broadband communication infrastructure, reach of latest ICT technologies to critical mass, training and skills development, etc. Security again needs to support and strengthen such progress.
Srinivas Surapani, VP - Commercial Excellence, Schneider Electric.
In our Digitization journey to strengthen the partner strategy and increasing engagement with our intermediaries, Partner Relationship Management (PRM) is conceived and is one of the main focus areas for 2014. PRM is a set of strategies, programs, assets and services delivered through a one-stop digital platform, available 24x7 - Anywhere!
We have recently deployed PRM, a web-based portal for our intermediary channels viz., Panel Builders, System Integrators, Contractors, OEMs, Consultants, etc. and are seeing good traffic on the portal. PRM portal will deliver a customized and easy-to-use online experience for our intermediaries, ultimately driving engagement and differentiating Schneider Electric in the marketplace. Long term, PRM will deliver the value proposition and digital suite of tools that will best meet the needs of each customer segment. Our channel managers are regularly enriching the content (targeted per channel type), communicating with partners through PRM, and are publishing news, updates and best practices etc.
PRM is a very important strategic initiative both for Schneider Electric & its partners. After its successful deployment, we are receiving great feedback from our partners. The partners feel a stronger connection with Schneider with the availability of information round the clock. They are really happy to get all the tools & documents in a single window focused for their specific channel & are now able to train their teams on our products & services through the online Learning Management System & share opportunities with us.
Virender Jeet, Sr. VP- T
echnology - Newgen Software
Newgen has nurtured the dream of “Making India Digital” since its inception. We have empowered organizations in India and across the globe to go paperless and automate key processes, by offering them our innovative and scalable Business Process Management (BPM), Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Customer Communication Management (CCM), and Case Management products and solutions. Anticipating the potential of technology enablers such as cloud, social, mobile, and analytics in shaping the future of business, Newgen recently upgraded its product portfolio to include innovative enterprise software platforms and solutions. A key milestone in this direction has been the launch of our Intelligent Business Process Management Suite, with active, on-demand, and predictive analytics, support for social media interactions, and complex event processing capabilities.
The biggest bottleneck for India to go completely “digital” is its resistance to change. In India, people still perceive technologies like digitization as threats to their own jobs. Power shortage, connectivity and bandwidth issues, and the need for local language support are some other key concerns hindering adoption of digital technologies in India. Efforts from the Government as well as the corporate sector can address these issues, by ensuring internet accessibility, addressing power shortage, and empowering masses by providing local language support and requisite training.
Vishal Parekh, Marketing Director, Kingston Technology – India
We understand that India, as a country, has immense potential for a larger digital footprint on the global map. We also know how the new technologies like Cloud and Virtualization are shaping up the tech industry and are constantly innovating. Each person has a different requirement and we work towards providing maximum satisfaction and to make lives easier. With the newer norms being set by the new Government, there will be a provision for a simpler access to data. Kingston solutions are backed by its legendary reliability and higher quality. We can directly help with upgrading systems to a better digital platform.
Sharing of data is important and in a country like ours, where connectivity is still an issue, nothing is faster or easier than sharing digital knowledge (data) with USB drives. Our USB drives are fast, secure, innovative and are the favourites of both – the classes and the masses.
The plan to have a Digital India is ambitious and it is a positive sign for the country's future. It is a plan to establish a digital platform to digitally deliver government programmes and services to individuals across India, thereby harnessing the power of information technology. However, there are a few things that might create delays if not a bottleneck. To take India to Cloud, we would require many more data centers along with security of the critical data.
Yogesh Sawant, Director, Partner Sales and Field Alliances Organization,
India, Hitachi Data Systems
Digital India aims to transform India into a digitally empowered society and a knowledge economy. The digitization of all government records is an important objective of making India digital – the government tenders and procurement, budget reporting, and status monitoring need to be transparent, the data being made immediately available to the public via the Internet.
HDS works closely with various government departments to help drive efficiency internally. With the new Government’s focus on making India digital, HDS has tremendous opportunity to take the partnership with the Government to the next level by catering to its growing technology demands.
One of the major challenges in making the country fully digitized is the infrastructure required to support the creation of a digitized India. The focus should not only be on developing new digitization platforms, but also on creating a flexible infrastructure to help upgrade the existing infrastructure towards digitization.
Rajesh Maurya, Country Manager, India & SAARC, Fortinet
From wired/wireless networks and messaging systems to web applications, databases and much more, Fortinet’s solutions can help secure the information infrastructure of Digital India ensuring security and control of networks, users and data. In parallel, Fortinet’s centralized management and reporting solutions can effectively manage and monitor any Fortinet deployment, from a few devices to thousands of appliances and endpoint security agents. With Fortinet solutions, Digital India can benefit from simplified management, added control and get a global view of its security status in real time. Digital India can securely build and grow its IT security infrastructure with our device-based licensing model, enabling easier and cost-effective scalability of deployment.
As per a World Bank report, currently India has only a broadband penetration of 2 per cent. The Government has a plan to provide broad band connectivity to 2.5 lakh villages by 2019. An active participation of the corporate sector along with the Government will speed up our dreams of realizing a 100-per cent Digital India.
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Anish Kanaran,Channel Director, Epicor, Middle East, Africa and India
The consumerization of IT continues to drive changes within business technology to help companies take advantage of trends such as social and mobile
in order to become more efficient and competitive. Next-generation ERP, such as Epicor ERP, is built on an agile and visionary business architecture that can help Indian companies embrace the ethos of ‘Making India Digital’.
Next-generation ERP removes the complexities of running a seemingly complex ERP solution and enables managers to focus on running their business rather than becoming an obstacle to growth. Corporate trends such as ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) and mobile enterprise apps attest to strong industry-wide recognition and appreciation of the huge impact of mobility. ERP mobility is enabling Indian workers become more productive, helping organizations compete outside of national borders.
One key challenge for the Digital India initiative will be the country’s infrastructure. Whilst the business community is growing fast and entrepreneurship is on the rise, underinvestment in infrastructure have left the country with poorly functioning transit systems and power grids that might endangered the Digital India initiative. Another key challenge for the initiative will be the collaboration and coordination required between all stakeholders in order to plan and carry out the necessary changes. Using technology that supports functionality such as social media, mobility and cloud will enable teams to work better together, regardless of where they are located.
Som Satsangi vice president, Sales, Enterprise Group, HP India
The Digital India programme is a great opportunity to develop the digital infrastructure of India, which will open up more jobs/business opportunities. We are here to support the Government in this endeavour by providing the latest technology and solutions to meet the present and future requirements of Digital India. Our Channel partners are integral for this programme to be a success, as they help in expanding business and enhancing customer’s experience.
Harish Kohli, Managing Director, Acer India
The Government’s “Digital India” programme aims to connect all gram panchayats by broadband Internet, promote e-governance and transform India into a connected knowledge economy. At Acer, we have executed major e-governance initiatives (such as, CCTNS and Passport Seva) under the National E-Governance Plan and have also won significant deals in the BFSI and infrastructure segments.
The manufacturing of electronic products that mainly takes place in the country is a low- value addition, and is mainly focussed on last-mile assembly. It is imperative for the Government to provide the necessary support to enable the overall development in the IT ecosystem. To address each dimension of the ecosystem and create such an environment, multiple factors such as proper connectivity and reliable power that affect the business environment need to be addressed.
Our Government is increasing its focus on this sector, and aims to transform it from a consumption-driven market to the one with manufacturing capability.
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Rajat Jain, Managing Director, Xerox India Limited.
Like any other mega trend in India, Digitization is proving to be truly disruptive. This is primarily due to the Internet of Things (IoT) Index, has ranked India, the second largest telecom market based on mobile users, at the 16th position. Given the complexity of economic and the geographic market dynamics, a true digital economy provides significant advantages in terms of social and government processes, FDI and overall economic development. While the government in its fi
rst 100 days has great emphasis on digitization, apart from bringing in latest digitization, scanning and outsourcing technologies for this market, it is still too early to comment how we at Xerox will or call help the government meet this target.
While the enterprises and citizens alike are enthusiastic about the government’s idea of pushing the country towards maximum digitization, it is essential to understand that the economy is yet to be equipped with adequate technology – especially in the tier 3, tier 4 markets to understand and implement these digital solutions. While it a step towards the right direction, consistent and appropriate policies need to be applied to make basic technology available across the country for public and government use. So yes, digitization has massive potential in India, and the IT growth mushroom is already on a path that cannot be checked. But a 100% digital economy is distant dream world-wide.
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Nilesh Goradia, Head-PreSales, India Subcontinent, Citrix
The Digital India project is a great initiative that promises exciting new possibilities for India. It is a testimony that technology plays an important role in our economic development. If implemented correctly, this project will bring a new layer of engagement between the government and citizens. Citrix will contribute in the digital India project at various levels. Citrix solutions which include industry leading virtualisation, mobility and networking technologies, can enable multi-level data security with anytime anywhere access from any devices, efficient manageability with limited resource, thus offering seamless end user experience while reducing operational costs. Our primary goal will be to take part in the government projects and empower organisations which can effectively deliver on the promises of the Digital India vision.
