Government To Back 1,200 Startups Under The Extended Digital India Initiative

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday (August 16) approved the expansion of the Digital India initiative and earmarked a total outlay of INR 14,903 Cr for the scheme. 

The announcement was made by Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw during a press briefing in New Delhi. Speaking to reporters, said that the expansion of the scheme will boost the homegrown digital economy, drive digital access to services and support the country’s IT and electronics ecosystem.

The government has also announced a slew of sops for startups under the expanded Digital India scheme. The higher outlay will go towards backing 1,200 startups in the Tier-II and Tier-III cities. Besides, the centre will also establish three Centres of Excellence (CoEs) in the area of artificial intelligence (AI) catering specifically to health, agriculture and sustainable cities. 

The revamped scheme will also deploy the outlay towards Bhashini, the AI-enabled multi-language translation tool. The AI service will be rolled out in all 22 scheduled languages from 10 currently. The Cabinet also approved the deployment of nine additional supercomputers to the National SuperComputing Mission’s current kitty of 18 supercomputers.

Digital document verification facility via DigiLocker will also be rolled out to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and other ‘organisations’ to streamline the process of validation. This is in line with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget announcement. 

Under the Future Skills Prime Programme, the government will upskill and reskill nearly 6.26 Lakh IT professionals. In addition, another 2.65 Lakh persons will be trained in information security under the Information Security & Education Awareness Phase (ISEA) programme.

The development comes a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his Independence Day speech, touted the Digital India initiative, saying that many developed countries had shown interest in the programme during his visit to Bali for a G20 summit last year. 

Launched in 2015, Digital India is the Centre’s flagship initiative that aims to transform India into a digitally-empowered society and knowledge economy. The government has time and again said that its goal is to scale the homegrown digital economy to a market size of $1 Tn by 2025, with Digital India at the core of it. 

Be it the IndiaStack or the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Digital India scheme has spurred the local economy and opened the floodgates for startups to unveil a slew of new products. With more funds at its disposal, the Digital India initiative is expected to further add to the rise and penetration of digital public goods infrastructure.