IT and Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that Digital India has the scope to become a $1 trillion business opportunity, which will combine requirements of the telecom sector, electronic manufacturing sector and the IT sector.
Speaking at the Annual India 2016 conference in Kolkata Thursday, Prasad said India's demographic dividend was accelerating because about 65 percent of India's population is below the age-group of 35 years, The Economic Times reports.
He also said the Modi government is building an infrastructure for delivery of digital services such as e-education and e-health and also plans to mount "optical cable network," which would connect village blocks or gram panchayats.
"The ambitious Digital India Initiatives is designed to bridge the digital divide and empower citizens more particularly the poor and deprived, to seek new opportunities in their life," the ET quoted Prasad as saying.
The finalisation of telecom policies such as spectrum sharing along with the preference to open-source IT applications would work towards building India's digital delivery infrastructure, he added.
According to reports, India's e-commerce space is currently growing at 67 percent.
"The vast network of our postal services is being used for delivery of ecommerce goods, which has led to an enormous increase in our parcel revenue," the telecom minister added.
Initiatives such as digitisation of the postal department, increasing common service centres and increasing "BPO sector activity in rural areas" would help to propel Digital India, Prasad explained.
[1 lakh = 100,000 | 1 crore = 10 million | 100 crore = 1 billion]
