The technology sector in India should aim to build 500-600 companies with revenues of ₹5,000 crore or more in the next three-five years, from about 25-30 such firms presently, as clients across the globe seek a new strategy in the post-COVID world, Union Minister of State for IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Thursday.
The Minister, replying to a query during a session during the CII annual meeting added that he believed the upcoming laws and regulations related to data and emerging technologies should have an evolving framework to align with the needs of customers and the industry, rather than being cast in stone from day one.
“Currently, there are about 25 Indian tech companies that have a ₹5,000 crore or above revenue,” Mr. Chandrasekhar said. “I think in the next three to five years, and I don’t say this lightly or to make a headline, we should have an ambition of taking it to about 500 to 600 [companies]. I’ve looked at the opportunities for growth and I think this is something that we can achieve,” he added.
He added that the two attributes of trust and competitiveness had become important for all large clients around the world as they sought a new strategy in the post-COVID world. “I think that is the trigger for the Indian tech sector to suddenly expand their ambitions, expand their appetites,” he said.
He further added that the government wanted “cyber laws and rules of operating to be as simple as possible.” Legislations, he said, tended to get very complicated when they tried to deal with complex issues. However, he said he did not believe that legislation should mirror the complexity of the issue.
On a question with regard to regulations keeping up with emerging tech and data-related issues, he said a number of things had to be contemporised for the digital economy of today and the digital economy of tomorrow. The ministry is going to proactively address this issue to achieve a trillion dollar digital economy, he said.
“For that the rules, laws that impact the consumers, impact the platforms have to be reasonably clear...it’s very difficult to make laws that are absolutely unambiguous but reasonably unambiguous in terms of what the obligations and rights are for all of these stakeholders,” he said.
Noting that the data protection will was now with Parliament and a Joint Parliamentary Committee, the Minister said that there were other Acts like the IT Act, and the TRAI Act, and there was an argument that those Acts were also dated in a sense.
He added that in India privacy is a fundamental right “so there are many things that will have to be thought through before corporates deal with personal data, whether they’re foreign corporates or Indian corporates, that are not violated of that basic principle of privacy being a fundamental right.”
The law, he said, “will be an evolving framework rather than something that is cast in stone from day one. I would rather that industry and government and everybody work towards a framework that has the ability to evolve as the needs of the industry and the consumer evolve rather than having something that is cast in stone and then having to go through a process of amendments that are difficult every 10 years or every five years.”
On the delay in the BharatNet project, the Minister said, “I understand the little bit of skepticism about BharatNet and the fact that it has progressed may be slower than we expected or anticipated. I think drawing out a national fiber optic network that has ambitions of reaching homes and villages is not a small or trivial task.” He expressed hope that the government would be able to make far faster progress on this than seen in the recent years.
