New Delhi: The information technology (IT) minister of Telangana, K.T. Rama Rao, claimed on Thursday he was working on creating a digital ecosystem to ensure a better society with advanced e-commerce, e-health and e-education facilities in the state.
Addressing industry executives at EmTech India 2017, the Mint-MIT Technology Review conference on technology and innovations in New Delhi, Rao said his state, in the next 18 months, will become the first in the country to provide proper broadband connection to every household along with potable drinking water supply.
Rao said the idea was to synergize and use the trenches dug for pipelines of drinking water for laying down fibre optic networks for broadband connection.
“When we started laying down plans for providing portable drinking water to every house (around 10 million houses) of Telangana, we realized that we would be laying nearly 120,000 km of new pipelines. We decided to synergize other things on to the same trench and the plan to lay down fibre optic network was also finalized,” added Rao.
He emphasized on digital infrastructure and digital literacy as the major aspects of creating a digital ecosystem .“Unless technology has social impact embedded into it, it is futile,” he added.
Since the launch of T-Hub last year, Hyderabad has witnessed a threefold increase in start-up activity. Currently, the city has over 30 incubators and co-working spaces. T-Hub aims to forge many such partnerships with governments and corporates across the world to setup T-Bridge centres, to strengthen trade relations and attract investment into the state of Telangana.
T-Bridge program claims to provide a platform for fast-track tech companies looking to tap into India’s huge consumer market for technology.
Speaking on encouraging new ideas and innovations in the state, Rao added, “We have to find out formulas and customize technology to the Indian requirement. The T-Bridge allows Indian start-ups to cross-pollinate ideas and create channels of knowledge transfer from multiple countries around the world.”
The program also aims to create a network of mentors, venture capitals, incubators and accelerators that is advantageous to the Indian start-up ecosystem.
He further expressed that India’s strength lies in its workforce population as 65% of Indians are below 35 years of age. “The opportunities for the government to create jobs in sunrise sectors like cyber security, multimedia, entertainment, animation , gaming and designing are plenty,” he added.
