New govt to build on past success in tech; more initiatives in the offing, says IT Secy

New Delhi: As the NDA is set to form the government for a third term, tech initiatives are expected to maintain pace, with IT Secretary S Krishnan on Wednesday saying that Meity will take up a slew of new initiatives as planned while building on the legacy of past successes and outcomes.

The comments assume significance as the crucial pieces of legislative and regulatory frameworks are being given shape in the IT Ministry over the past months, amid the rapid advance of AI, and new-age technologies globally.

Krishnan, speaking on the sidelines of a Software Technology Park of India (STPI) event, also said the ministry has a "number of initiatives which have been planned and are in the works" and those will be taken up once the new government is in place.

To a question on whether the work on Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) rules and shaping Digital India legislation framework will continue at speed, he said, "The legacy in terms of what we have in the organisation in terms of...institutional memory continues." Asked in particular about the status of the proposed Digital India legislation, which would provide guardrails and define regulatory approach on new age technologies like AI, he said, "We will see how we structure it...it is too premature to hazard a guess on what shape it takes." The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) will push ahead with its agenda, he said asserting that it will build on past successes and take them forward..

It is pertinent to mention here that the BJP on its own got 240 seats and the NDA has a clear majority in the 543-member house, while the principal opposition party Congress secured 99 seats. Though the NDA is comfortably above the majority mark of 272 in the Lok Sabha, the BJP has fallen short of the magic number for the first time since 2014 and is critically dependent on its allies for government formation.

Earlier at the inaugural address, Krishnan said India's digital economy is estimated to grow 3-fold to reach trillion dollars by 2030, as he exhorted the industry to grab significant opportunities posed by AI.

With tech tools, software, and solutions powering virtually all services and products across the board, the IT Ministry is also in the midst of assessing the size and scale of digital economy in India, Krishnan said.

Referring to opportunities posed by AI and next-gen technologies, he said, "We are at the cusp of a significant and interesting development about to happen...and the sector needs to be watched in coming years and we need to be active participants in this".

Being a product nation is an important ambition for India, he said emphasising the value of IP-creation, a high-margin products' game.

Large software companies in India have maintained a bigger focus on services, more than products, gievn that software services offer comfort of a captive market, set margins of 20-30 per cent, with little or no risks, he said.

"With products you never know! You are never sure," he observed but added that a strong entrepreneurial culture with risk appetite will yield handsome gains for the sector and encourage creation of cutting-edge products in the market.