Tech giants want Centre to spur Digital India’s growth

Accelerate the growth of sunrise sectors: Check.

Offer more PLIs for electronics manufacturing: Check.

Find ways to power ‘Digital India’ initiatives further: Check.

Set aside more money for research and development: Check.

These were some of the prominent items on the wish lists of tech giants ahead of Budget 2023.

With the Unified Payment Interface (UPI), Aadhaar, CoWIN, the relatively new Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) and Digital Rupee, India has been witnessing a silent revolution on the digital public service delivery front.

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Industry watchers hoped the Union Budget would power these initiatives further.

“Building on ‘Digital India’ opportunities further will help create employment opportunities,” said Pareekh Jain, Founder of IT services consulting firm, Pareekh Consulting.

Given India’s spending on research and development (R&D) remains at a meagre 0.5 per cent of its GDP, industry players expected more grants to boost such efforts. That would attract global enterprises to set up more global capability centres (GCCs) here in India, which currently houses around 1,500 such units.

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Some stressed on the need to support new and growing industries.

“The EV industry is at its inflection point, especially the two-wheeler segment. I hope that the budget supports SMEs/MSMEs who are working on innovative and capacity-building technologies to transform the EV sector,” said Omer Basith, the chief executive officer of electronic manufacturing services firm Virtual Forest.

“The government should keep in mind that to accelerate the adoption of EVs, it is not only necessary to incentivize volumes of production but also to incentivise R&D,” Basith added.

Industry body Nasscom has urged the government to notify the safe harbour rules (used to resolve disputes tied to transfer pricing issues) on margins for IT companies with a turnover of up to Rs 1,000 crore from the present Rs 200 crore. It has also appealed to prescribe timelines for the closure of advance pricing agreements. Budgetary pronouncements on these aspects could reduce the compliance burden along with improving the ease of doing business.

Skill shortage was another area where the tech industry wanted the government’s help.

“The government policy could be changed to promote the development of talent and skills. The tech industry requires a talented and skilled workforce. The government may provide funding for programmes to modernise educational buildings with state-of-the-art R&D capabilities,” Acer India Chief Financial Officer Alok Dubey said.

The tech giants also hoped for better data-related policies from this Budget.

“India’s vision of establishing itself as a digital hub is gradually becoming a reality. Data-driven ecosystems will fuel future growth,” said Ashish Chaturvedi, a practice leader at HFS Research.

“It would be interesting to see what measures are taken in the upcoming Budget around incentivising tech startups, devising more transparent and unified data-related policies, and provisions for developing a congenial business environment,” he added.