Budget 2020: What is in store for Technology?

Budget 2020

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget 2020 in the Parliament on Saturday, forwarding several policies pertaining to all sectors. During the announcements, she proposed certain policies that will help in boosting the technology sector and extending support to economic growth in India.

Budget 2020

In a major reform for this sector, the minister said that the Centre will soon unveiling a policy to enable private sector to build data centre parks throughout the country. “Data is the new oil,” she said.

Sitharaman said that India’s new economy will be led-by technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), 3D printing, drones, data storage, etc.

Expressing his views the impact of the budget allocated for the technology industry, in the government’s ambition to make India’s economy more competitive, Sandeep Bhambure, Vice President and Managing Director, India & SAARC, Veeam Software said, “The government’s announcement of setting up a policy to build data centre parks throughout India for digital connectivity and the allocation of Rs 6,000 crores for BharatNet is a big step towards a successful Digital India initiative. This will increase the adoption of technologies such as IoT, Analytics and AI; leading to an unprecedented amount of data generation. Data management and protection will play a key role to safeguard the citizen’s data from cyber-breaches. Additionally, the implementation of intelligent data management platforms will help achieve positive outcomes from the data.

Suganthi Shivkumar, Managing Director, ASEAN, India & Korea at Qlik believes that2020 Budget has dedicated the necessary funds and resources towards developing revolutionary and breakthrough technologies.

“We appreciate the government’s decision in the 2020 Budget to dedicate the necessary funds and resources towards developing revolutionary and breakthrough technologies such as ML, robotics and AI to further the skills that will prepare us for the next wave and accelerate India’s journey towards becoming a digital giant. With data equated as the new oil, the government’s plan of building cutting-edge data parks across the country is equally important. With these parks, there will be alot of data available but the key difference for businesses will be the ability to harness the data near real time and obtain timely actionable insights from the data,” adds Shivkumar.

“Furthermore, the governments initiative of allocating Rs 6000 crores to enable unabridged digital connectivity in over 100,000 Gram Panchayats through the Fiber to Home BharatNet scheme holds brilliant potential in securing India’s passage towards achieving tech-empowerment for the remote sector,” says Shivkumar.

Rakesh Kharwal, Managing Director, India/South Asia & ASEAN, Cyberbit says that the budget offers a great opportunity to set up the bridge courses on cybersecurity skilling to meet the 4 million global shortage of skilled cyber

“Great opportunity to set up bridge courses on cybersecurity skilling to meet the 4 million global shortage of skilled cyber people under Skill India and Apprenticeship Courses in Financial Budget 2020:The government has highlighted the essence of skills sets for which various knowledge translation clusters for emerging technologies like Analytics, IoT, AI, and Cybersecurity will be setup. Now, since it has allocated Rs. 99,300 crores to the education sector and Rs. 3,000 crores for skill development itself, the government should look to adopt simulation technologies such as Cyber range to provide internships and better job opportunities for fresh engineers. The 150 higher educational institutes that the government is planning to set up could also latch on to this opportunity by parting world-class cybersecurity training as a part of their apprenticeship courses,” says Kharwalk from Cyberbit.

Commenting on seamless delivery of digital services Rahul Sharma, MD-India, LogMeIn says, “Budget 2020 looks very promising. We are particularly enthused about the FM’s announcement of seamless delivery of digital services as part of the next wave of the digital revolution. AI, ML, Analytics, IoT, Robotics are making giant inroads in India, as was observed in the budget. The policy being introduced to build data centre parks throughout the country will help enhance the digital infrastructure to a significant extent. We are looking forward to the next phase of Digital India which will be a big growth driver for businesses and individuals alike.”

Budget 2020 seems encoring for start-ups. Talking about its impact on the emerging firms Piyush Kumar, Founder & CEO, Rooter says, “It’s very encouraging to see that Indian Government regards entrepreneurship as “strength of India”. Start-ups can not only get a lot of foreign investment in India but also create thousands of jobs. The investment clearance and advisory cell for entrepreneurs is a great step to encourage new entrepreneurs and provide assistance. Moreover, the seed fund to support early-stage start-ups will help them to create a quality market fit product before approaching VCs.”

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