Cyient COO's discussion on 'Digitally Atmanirbhar Bharath' with eminent tech entrepreneur Arvind Gupta

Points of discussion between Karthikeyan Natarajan, President and COO Cyient and Àrvind Gupta, Head and Co-Founder of the Digital India Foundation, a policy think tank working in areas of Digital Inclusion, Smart Cities, Internet Governance, Data Privacy & Cyber Security, and Electronics Manufacturing. Mr. Gupta has played a critical role in bridging technology and democracy.

The discussion of around half an hour, centred around ‘Digitally Atmanirbhar Bharat’ wherein Mr. Gupta laid special emphasis on the fact that India, and Indian models both in private startups and the way government has innovated to deliver services to citizens has become an aspirational model for the world. India is at the forefront of the next digital revolution and will contribute extensively to the next billion on the internet.

KEY HEIGHLIGHTS BY ARVIND GUPTA :

· The holy trinity of Jan Dhan, Aadhar and mobile networks now a model for governments across the world in the effective delivery of services to citizens

· India has successfully delivered services worth $80 billion on an investment of just close to $2 billion. Praising Aadhar and its ability to deliver government services in real-time to users, while eliminating pilferage, Gupta said that Aadhar is a case study for the world.

· What we are seeing today is that data and digital economies are key economies by which neo-economies are being built. It is also one of the biggest wealth creators in the last 10 years. Out of the 4.5 Billion people on the Internet, India contributes 700 million users. We have seen many of the users move from alphabetical illiteracy to digital literacy. In this context, India has taken a leap”.

· India has built to scale and at the lowest cost at the highest quality. This is the mantra of Atmanirbhar Bharat. The innovation for the next six billion will come from Bharat. India has shown great agility in policymaking and governance

· India is now solving global problems essentially on the back of its own great R&D capabilities and innovations, and these solutions are being adopted by the world, according to Gupta. He cited the example of India’s payment stack set up, especially the United Payments Interface (UPI), on which several new payments apps and businesses have been built.

· The National Health stack will be built out on the same line as India stack and the educational Stack. Healthcare and education, these are two very important societal problems. We need the brick and mortar infrastructure while simultaneously filling the gaps using Tele-medicine, distance education and online education. The new education policy allows for that and Ayushman Bharat has enabled this health stack.

· See the example of PPE Kits. From producing 0 kits in March, we now make 1 lakh kits per day. That is unison in vision and execution when India decides to do something. India is built at scale and at the lowest cost and at the highest quality. This is our mantra towards Atma Nirbhar Bharat”.

Karthikeyan Natarajan President and COO, Cyient

A self-reliant agile India will have a big opportunity to capture global opportunities through its production. The need of the hour is to facilitate reforms for ease of doing business and have in place an effective monitoring mechanism for implemented schemes, whether it be for short term measures or long-term strategy

Natarajan said, “On one end, we are not innovating for India and for the world. On the other end, we see an industry report which says about 61 unicorns which are founded by Indian entrepreneurs are headquartered outside of India. What can be done to change this scenario?” Mr. Gupta in response states that he believes more than 100 unicorns will emerge headquartered in India, solving Indian problems and going global from India.

Arvind and Natarajan also discussed the need for governments to behave like startups and start thinking of innovations to solve everyday problems that citizens face. They conversed that this could be achieved if we start thinking of the government as a cloud service provider. This will ensure replicability and will eliminate the need for each city/state to come up with their own individual solutions to problems facing their citizenry.