August 2022: India has embarked on a revolutionary digital growth over the past decade by embracing technological innovation across sectors. Highlighting this achievement, CNBC-TV18, India’s leading business and financial news channel, hosted the 7th edition of ‘Digital India Vision Summit’ powered by Mastercard. Held in Delhi on 24th August 2022, this annual digital leadership forum involved policymakers and industry captains who shared their vision on accelerating and optimising ongoing digital revolution to redefine India’s Techade.

With a focus on digital privacy, cyber security, capacity building, and skilling, DIGITAL INDIA VISION 7.0 linked the dots among digital infrastructure, digital government, electronics manufacturing, and modern digital laws. It kickstarted with the welcome address by Managing Editor of CNBC-TV18, Shereen Bhan, who highlighted on how digital evolution is shaping Indian business at large. She said, “India has experienced the limitless power of digital technologies. With 830 million Internet users, India has the cheapest mobile data in the world. Any business owner will champion the need for investment in technology, as each of them are mapping out individual digital transformational narratives. The summit showcases India’s digital success stories by examining major industries going digital to boost businesses and considering ways for better technological application across all facets of life to help India become a global leader.”

This was followed by an introductory note by Nikhil Sahni, Division President, South Asia at Mastercard on the Role of Fintech In India’s Techade. He commented, “India is amongst the top in terms of innovation index for the 11th year in a row, according to Global Innovation Index. There is a lot of innovation happening in key government initiatives for Digital India such as ONDC. Over the last 4-5 years, India has emerged as the leader in adoption of digital payments, thanks to global as well as homegrown technologies and a supportive policy regime by the Government of India and Reserve Bank of India. Fintech has been at the core of it which has allowed it to raise around 30 billion dollars since 2014 and has made India the third largest fintech market.”

The first panel discussion on the topic ‘Public Digital Platforms Enabling Inclusive India Fast & Far’ was moderated by Ashmit Kumar, Deputy Editor, CNBC-TV18, and had eminent panellists Abhishek Singh, MD, President, & CEO, Digital India Corporation, National e-Governance Division & MyGov; T Koshy, CEO, ONDC; J Satyanarayana, Chief Advisor, Centre for 4th Industrial Revolution (India Centre), World Economic Forum; and Dr. Anand Deshpande, Founder, Chairman and Managing Director of Persistent Systems, part-time member of UIDA. The panellists deliberated on how India’s public digital platform is vital for governments-citizen engagement and the avenues of improvement through e-governance. Echoing the sentiment, J Satyanarayana, Chief Advisor, World Economic Forum maintained, “Data Protection Bill is the need of the hour, and a fresh attempt will be made to bring it to parliament at the earliest.”

Thereafter, a special address by Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary of the Industries & Commerce (I&C) and Information Technology (IT) Departments of the Telangana government, followed on the evolving roles and challenges of start-up ecosystem in bringing solutions for agriculture and education. The summit proceeded with the next panel discussion on the topic ‘5G To Foster India’s Techade,’ where prominent personalities from the telecom industry of India such as Shri K. Rajaraman, DOT Secretary; Akhil Gupta, Vice Chairman, Bharti Enterprises; Rajen Vagadia, Country Manager, Qualcomm India; Anand Bhaskar, Managing Director for the Global Service Provider Business for India & SAARC, CISCO; and Madhav Sheth, CEO, Realme India took part. The session was moderated by Reema Tendulkar, IT & Telecom Editor of CNBC-TV18 in which the esteemed panellists pondered on how the adoption of disruptive technologies, innovative business models, regulatory efforts and shared services will enjoy an upward growth trajectory.

Followed was the keynote address by Amitabh Kant, Sherpa, G20, where he commented, “India needs to present an alternate narrative to China. If China’s idea is of expanding its influence and presence through physical infrastructure, India should use digital infrastructure and digital highway as her narrative.” The third-panel session on the topic- ‘Securing The Cashless Payment Ecosystem’ involved Abhijit Bose, Head of WhatsApp, India; Aditya Murthy, VP, Digital Partnerships – South Asia, Mastercard; Nitin Chugh, SBI, Deputy Managing Director and Head of Digital Banking and Transformation; Akhil Handa, Chief Digital Officer, Bank of Baroda; Kush Mehra, Chief Business Officer & President, Pine Labs; and Arundhati Bhattacharya, CEO & Chairperson, Salesforce India as panellists. Moderated by Ritu Singh, Associate Editor, CNBC-TV18, the panellists discussed about automated security testing and why security boundaries of various players must be extended to end-users, third parties, and other ecosystem partners.