Budget 2021 | Technology sector expects govt to incentivise use of AI

By Srikanth Chakkilam

We feel quite optimistic about the Union Budget 2021. We anticipate the Government to create special provisions for the technology sector in its bid to achieve a trillion-dollar economy. We feel that the budget should reflect on three focus areas: Digital transformation, Data protection and Privacy and Cloud-based Infrastructure leveraging disruptive technologies to boost the overall IT-sector.

In the wake of everything moving digital, Data protection and privacy have been the most discussed themes of 2020 with a lot of concerns surfacing pertaining to data laws. Cloud infrastructure has seen a large number of investment announcements by private enterprises over the past few months, however, one aspect that requires greater focus is that of Cloud security. The budget should promote incentivizing enterprises to adopt intelligent AI-driven quality assurance frameworks which will lead to higher performance, productivity and reduction in Cloud application and data security breaches. Secondly, MSME’s over the past few quarters have shown muted growth, the budget needs to subsidize and incentivize the use of new-age technologies such as AI and ML in driving the growth of MSMEs.

(The author is CEO at Cigniti Technologies)