Digital Economy To Contribute Over 20% of India's GDP By 2026 Says Rajeev Chandrasekhar By CIOTechOutlook Team

Digital Economy To Contribute Over 20% of India's GDP By 2026 Says Rajeev Chandrasekhar

CIOTechOutlook Team | Thursday, 17 August 2023, 11:25 IST

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, predicted that by 2026, the digital economy would account for more than 20% of the nation's GDP. Speaking at the "G20 Digital Innovation Alliance Summit" in Bengaluru, he claimed that India is a leading country that quickly embraced technology and has begun providing solutions to the rest of the globe.

"The digital economy has gone from 4-4.5 per cent in 2014 of the total GDP to 11 per cent of the total GDP today. And we expect the digital economy to contribute over 20 per cent of our GDP by 2026," Chandrasekhar said.

He claimed that India utilized technology to give practical answers that, in recent years, have revolutionized people's lives, governance, and democracy, not only for innovation in the broadest sense.

"This pace of digitalisation means we are now looking at every citizen, every consumer consuming digital products or services, whether it is Instagram reels or Digital Public Infrastructure that connect them to the government and governance, or using the cloud and all of the upstream and downstream impacts that are created by this space and trend of digitalisation," the minister said.

As per Chandrasekhar, "the center of gravity of technology," which was formerly concentrated in a small number of nations and revolved around a small number of firms and companies, is shifting to open source systems and younger and younger startups that are upending the status quo. According to him, these developments are building on the more general trend of growing digitalisation.

The Minister praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his commitment to maximizing the use of digital technology and said that he had referred to the upcoming ten years as a "Techade," or a period of technological opportunity.