India’s Digital Economy to Hit $1 Trillion by 2028

New Delhi: Minister of state for electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that India's digital economy is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2027-28 as the country is growing at 2.8 per cent per annum. He further said that the value of the India artificial intelligence (AI) mission is likely to be doubled to Rs 20,000 crore from Rs 10,000 crore.

However, the government had earlier expected India to reach the $1 trillion-mark by 2026-27 but the target has been moved by a year due to various reasons, including the Covid-19 pandemic. “Digital economy is growing at the rate of 2.8 per cent because of the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His vision laid down in 2015 has played out well. We are already the fastest growing digital economy of the world. We are aiming to be a $1 trillion digital economy by 2027-28,” Chandrasekhar said at an event here.

The minister also said that the prime minister has already approved Rs 1 lakh crore as seed fund, which will be invested in research and development for fuel innovation and India AI mission with a total value of Rs 20,000 crore. The cabinet has approved only around Rs 10,000 crore for the India AI mission but the minister said the total value is about Rs 20,000 crore, including some other factors that cannot be disclosed at the moment.

“One of the big things that the prime minister has done is to take these young Indians and make them globally competitive and become globally talented entrepreneurs that the world today respects. The main task of the technology industry is that they want the momentum of development to continue. There are many, many more things to be done to continue this growth, including access to capital, lower cost of capital, issues of customs, duty for manufacturing. These are all things on the government's radar,” he said.

Chandrasekhar further said that Indians would have an Internet connection and would be fully digitally empowered as part of Prime Minister's vision for Digital India launched in 2015. “We are very determined to make sure that the momentum continues. The Indian innovation ecosystem continues to grow and will become one of the leading innovation ecosystems in the world,” he added.