By Rahul Raj Singh Director, Marketing and Sales, Catseye Systems and Solutions
"The Union Budget is a great starting point for our country's technology-driven transformation and we expect that this year, it should bring in more opportunities of low-interest loans for the MSME industries and a special allocation should be made towards semiconductors and silicon chip manufacturing. As for now, we rely a lot on international markets and because of that, the current supply of the chips in our country is really affected.
The focus should also be on increasing the subsidies on e-vehicles to reduce the dependencies on conventional fuels."
By Zafar Imam, CEO, FinShell
"Technological and digital disruptions have impacted and led to the growth of all industries, with the financial sector is at the top of that list. With the growing smartphone users and internet penetration, FinTech has become an invaluable part of each user's life. The increasing users of digital financial platforms have brought in strong competition in the financial services industry. It goes without saying that with the access and usage of financial platforms online, the benefit has reached users irrespective of geographies, time and socio-economic boundaries. The consistent growth in the number of UPI users showcases and establishes the digital penetration in the payments business. There is also a significant growth in the investments and insurance sectors that has been led by this enhancing digital footprint.
At this time, with this growth, it is important for us as part of the larger industry to support and enable digital finances and its infrastructure to make each user's life easier and smoother."
By Mr Siddharth Kukatlapalli, Co-Founder and CBO, Syntizen
"India, together, has moved towards the ‘e’ world. Whether it is commerce, finance, agriculture, education and learning, corporate, or any other industry you pick, technology and the Internet have reached all households in the country, in some way or the other. With the pandemic hitting the economy, the Internet and technology infrastructure held the country and its people up and functioning. Keeping all this in mind, we must acknowledge that the ‘Digital Way’ is the way for the present and the future. As we move closer to the Budget announcements, we are eagerly waiting to know what is new and upcoming for this year for all digital businesses – big, medium and small. With the adequate infrastructure, right audience (which already exists in the country), and ample support, Digital Businesses can flourish and support the people and the economy in all ways possible.
While we talk about our expectations from the Budget, as the founder of a digital startup, we are always looking forward to the support that the government brings for us every year. Today, India stands third globally, after China and the USA, with the most number of unicorn startups. We are the future and we are making a better future. The startup ecosystem together has always been supported by the government and looks forward to the same in the year that is waiting ahead of us."
By Dilli Babu Nandarapu Founder & CEO, ShopConnect
“It is critical to incentivise offline SMEs to adopt and strengthen digital solutions to ensure better business prospects and speedy recovery of the overall economy. Moreover, digital infrastructure support will be important especially for MSME retailers since the future is getting more and more digitised, personalised, and connected. If we equip them from business disruption, it will contribute more to the Indian economy.
In addition, accelerating ONDC rollout will facilitate e-commerce platform providers to offer more features and easier customer onboarding covering rural areas and non-metro cities as well.
Lastly, promoting sales process outsourcing (SPO) as it will provide more employment opportunities, which, at the same time, global brands can leverage to India’s advantage. I believe the focus should be more on strengthening infrastructure, end-to-end digitisation capabilities to support emerging startups in this space. There should also be some respite from mandatory compliance for the D2C Brands as it will help to establish and scale offline and online businesses.”
ByPriya Mahajan, Head of ASPAC Public Policy & Regulatory Counsel, Verizon Business Group
‘Over the last few years, the Government of India has made great strides to foster the growth and development of the Indian IT and telecommunication sector, strengthening the economic and digital transformation in the country. In particular, we are pleased to note India's huge rise in the World Bank's 'Ease of Doing Business' report.
As India sits on the cusp of a sustained period of economic recovery and growth, one of the keys to success lies in continuing to make the necessary reforms in the relaxing of tax structures that have played an integral role in developing the country’s economic prowess.
The recently announced telecom reforms by the Department of Telecommunications is a welcome start. To this point, we strongly believe that the continued promotion of legal certainty, predictability and global consistency will further foster Innovation and Investments, particularly in the vital areas of Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence and 5G.’