Addressing the 50th anniversary celebrations of International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) at Patancheru near here, he suggested to the institute and Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) to expand their partnership for higher productivity and water management in dry land areas to digital agriculture.
The Prime Minister claimed that India has stepped up its efforts in using latest technology like Artificial Intelligence (AI) in areas like crop assessment, land records digitization, deployment of drones for spraying of insecticides and nutrients and providing various services.
"On one hand, we are focusing on expanding production of millets, chemical-free farming while on the other we are using modern technology from solar pumps to deploying drones. This is a key part of our vision for agriculture growth for the next 25 years," he said.
Modi said the government was trying to develop ecosystems linked to agriculture research and working with private agritech players to provide affordable and high-tech services to farmers.
The Prime Minister said that agriculture has the potential to pull a very large population of the country out of poverty and take them towards a better life-style.
Stating that a large area lacking irrigation facility could not become part of the green revolution, Modi said the government was working on a dual strategy. On the one hand, a large part of the land is being brought under irrigation through water conservation and connecting of rivers while on the other, water use efficiency through micro irrigation is being encouraged in areas with limited irrigation.
The Prime Minister said India was also focusing on establishing FPOs (Farmer Producer Organisations) and agriculture value chain. "We wish to create an alert and potent market force out of small farmers by organizing them into thousands of FPOs", he said.
He said that India's goal is not just increasing food grain production. India has enough surplus food grain to run one of the world's big food security programs. "We are focusing on food security as well as nutrition security. With this vision, we have developed many bio-fortified varieties in the last 7 years".
Noting that ICRIAST has rich experience of working in semi-arid areas, the Prime Minister called for joint efforts with the institute for developing sustainable and diversified production systems by linking farmers.
Modi also mooted the idea of ICRISAT, ICAR and agricultural universities working together in the area of biofuel. "You have been working on sweet sorghum. You can develop seeds to help farmers in drought prone areas and farmers with limited land resources to grow crops which can yield more biofuel," he said.
He exuded confidence that with innovative minds at ICRISAT, people's participation and society's commitment the country will be able to overcome all challenges related to agriculture
The Prime Minister also inaugurated ICRISAT's Climate Change Research Facility on Plant Protection and ICRISAT's Rapid Generation Advancement Facility. These two facilities are dedicated to the smallholder farmers of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
The Prime Minister also unveiled a specially designed logo of ICRISAT and launched a commemorative stamp issued on the occasion. Governor of Telangana Tamilisai Soundararajan, Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar and Union Tourism Minister G. Kishan Reddy, ICRISAT Director General Dr Jacqueline Hughes were among those present on the occasion.
Underlining the importance of the next 25 years for both the country and also for ICRISAT, the Prime Minister stressed the need for new goals and working for them.
The Prime Minister lauded ICRISAT for its contribution in helping agriculture in large part of the world including India. He appreciated their contribution in water and soil management, improvement in crop variety, on-farm diversity and livestock integration. He also praised their holistic approach in integrating farmers with their markets and promoting pulses and chickpea production in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. "Your research and technology have helped make agriculture easy and sustainable", Modi said.
The Prime Minister said that the worst affected by climate change are the people on the last rung of development with little resources. That is why, the Prime Minister reiterated India's request to the world to pay special attention to the climate change. He talked of LIFE- Lifestyle for Environment; P3 - Pro planet people movements and India's net zero target by 2070. "Pro planet people is a movement that connects every community, every individual with climate responsibility to tackle the climate challenge. This is not limited to just words, but is also reflected in the actions of the Government of India", he added.
Referring to 15 Agro-Climatic Zones and 6 seasons of the country, the Prime Minister highlighted the depth of ancient experience of Indian agriculture. He pointed out that India's focus is on the fusion of 'back to basic' and 'march to future' to protect its farmers from climate challenges. "Our focus is on our more than 80 per cent farmers who are small and need us the most", the Prime Minister said.
The Prime Minister said that the National Mission for self-reliance in edible oils indicates India's new approach. The Mission aims to increase palm oil area by 6.5 lakh hectares in next five years. "This will help Indian farmers at every level and will prove very beneficial for the farmers of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as well. I have been told that Telangana farmers have set big goals for palm oil production. The Centre will extend them all help," he said.
He also dwelled on the steps taken to strengthen post-harvest infrastructure like creating cold chain storage capacity of 35 million tonnes and creation of 1 lakh crore rupees Agriculture Infrastructure Fund.
Earlier, he visited an exhibition displaying various achievements, scientific agricultural breakthroughs and innovations of the Institute since 1972 which address poverty, malnutrition and environmental degradation in the harshest dryland regions of the world.
ICRISAT is an international organisation that conducts agricultural research for development in Asia & sub-Saharan Africa. It helps farmers by providing improved crop varieties and hybrids and also helps smallholder farmers in the drylands fight climate change.
It is pertinent to mention here that the Ministry has enabled the establishment of CSCs in all Gram Panchayats of the country for digital delivery of government services to the citizens within their vicinity under the Digital India programme.
The objective is to setup at least one CSC in every Gram Panchayat and promote rural enterprises enabled through an integrated ICT platform.
“At present these CSCs through their widespread network in the country are also delivering their services in some universities across the country and providing services like admission form filling, certificate requests, fees payment, admit card downloads and other services like preparation of various courses, online admission management system,” the UGC letter read.
In its letter to the vice-chancellors of universities and principals of all colleges, the UGC has said, “For integration of the various services being provided by Universities and Colleges with the Digital Sewa Portal of CSC, the higher educational institutes are requested to contact CSC SPOC in their respective state for availing their ICT services.”
The company announced a pilot of the first-ever Google Assistant-enabled, end-to-end vaccine booking flow that will guide users through the process of booking a vaccination appointment on the COWIN website.
"We have worked closely with COWIN to enable this integration, where people everywhere will be able to easily book a vaccine appointment in a more guided manner," the company said in a blogpost.
This feature will work in English and eight Indian languages including Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu and will begin rolling out in early 2022.
"With the fundamental drivers of digitisation now in place and millions of new users coming online, India's goal of becoming a truly digital economy is within sight," said Sanjay Gupta, Country Head & Vice President, Google India.
Google also announced a feature in Search that will give users the option to access web pages originally written in other languages and see it in their preferred language.
According to the company, this feature will now make high-quality web content available to local language users when they search, and they will still be able to view the page in its original source language if they prefer.
It is now available in five Indian languages including Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam, with more to come.
The tech giant is expanding voice driven experiences in Indian languages by introducing the ability to hear search results out loud, for users who find it easier to consume information by listening.
To make Google Pay app more user friendly, it has announced the additional option of Hinglish -- a conversational hybrid of Hindi and English -- on the app.
"The introduction of Hinglish is our attempt to make these interactions even more intuitive and natural via Google Pay," the company said.
In collaboration with local authorities, Google has been working on a range of climate-related efforts in India that can help surface timely and important information, and ensure people's safety.
Google has partnered with the Central Pollution Control Board to bring the latest Air Quality Information to Google Search. It has also partnered with the Indian Meteorological Department to launch Weather Alerts for extreme climatic conditions.
In a letter to state secretary and directors of health mission, the health ministry made it mandatory for all its health facilities to participate in the mission.
Accordingly, all the health facilities like hospital, clinics, laboratories, pharmacies, radiology centre etc , where any healthcare facility is provided, are requested to register for the digital mission, the letter read.
Under the digitalisation of health records mission, Government hospitals are advised to procure Hospital Information Management System Software. The Centre has also made available two solutions for the digitalisation of the health records for hospitals - e-Hospital by NIC (National Informatic Center) and e-Sushrut by C-DAC (Center for Development of Advanced Computing).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had launched the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission via video conferencing on September 27. Under the mission, every Indian will get a unique health ID that will also work as a health account to which personal health records can be linked.
Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, while inaugurating Aarogya Manthan 3.0 to mark the third anniversary of Ayushman Bharat - Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) on September 25, had said: "Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana has reformed the entire healthcare system of India. It gives me great happiness that the scheme has served more than 2.2 crore people in the last three years to the people residing in the remotest of the areas".
The National Health Authority (NHA) has been entrusted with the task of implementing this initiative.
As per reports, BMC has chalked out a plan to implement the digital payment and cashless transactions services in over 9000 street vending stores. The plans included a tie-up with an online payment platform to put across a digital transaction infrastructure in the capital city. The civic body will roll out the cashless transaction services in the vending zones within 3 months.
The BMC pact with Paytm carries a lot of incentives. Paytm will reward the customers as well as the vendors after a minimum of 25 transactions every month. The payment platform will also come up with a proposal of loan facilities for shopkeepers subscribing to the online payment system.
"In the first phase, we have sent the list of street vendors across Bhubaneswar to Paytm. If a vendor transacts digitally at least 25 times in a month, he/she will get rewarded by the company which will directly get deposited in their respective bank accounts," informed BMC Deputy Commissioner, Pramod Kumar Prusty.
Despite being a promising initiative, vendors have a mixed reaction to BMC's novel initiative.
"New age customers, nowadays, are preferring for cashless transactions. If they have no cash or in short of spare change, they opt for digital payment mode. It is easier for us to accept the spare change digitally instead of stocking the cash at our counters. It is good that the amount gets directly credited to our account," said Ramesh Chandra Das, a street vendor.
However, expressing concern he said, "The flip side of cashless transactions is we have to queue up at ATMs to withdraw the cash. Moreover, many wholesale counters don't accept payments digitally. They demand cash payment during wholesale procurement of commodities."
"Overall, the digital payment method is convenient but it demands extra effort," he grudgingly added.
With the Modi government giving an extra push to digital transactions post the demonetisation, the Naveen Patnaik government has made digital transactions its core policy. The BMC's cashless drive in vending zones is being seen as State's measure to push online transactions.
The initiative aims to bridge the digital divide in the country, increase accessibility of digital devices for students from underprivileged communities, and empower them for a brighter future.
As part of the initiative, Amazon will directly provide 20,000 new digital devices to underprivileged young people, in partnership with over 150 large and small non-profit organisations, impacting over 100,000 students across India, the company said in a statement.
In addition, the company also encourages its customers to either contribute in cash on Amazon Pay or donate their old devices essentially mobile phones, and laptops, that will be refurbished and distributed to provide digital learning devices for young people, it added.
"The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to focus the stark digital divide, not only in the field of education but also in access to essential services. Amongst the most adversely affected are young people from marginalised communities," said Manish Tiwary, Vice President, Amazon India, in the statement.
"Together with our customers, employees and partners, we aim to bridge the gap by enabling young people with digital devices for continued access to online education and essential services for their families," he added.
Cash contribution from customers is enabled by a partnership between Amazon Pay and GiveIndia. Proceeds from the contribution will be used for purchasing new devices, data cards and digital accessories for students.
Old mobiles that customers contribute will be picked-up by Cashify, Amazon's partner in this initiative, who will refurbish it and donate to Goonj, a nonprofit organization working in the field of sustainable material giving, the company said
Over the years, several programmes have been launched to ensure that the benefits reach its intended beneficiaries in a targeted and leakproof manner, with limited touch points between the government and the beneficiary. The concept of electronic voucher takes forward this vision of good governance.
To begin with e-RUPI facility is available for health services and will be expanded to other segments.
"Today the country is giving a new dimension to digital governance. eRUPI voucher is going to play a huge role in making digital transactions, and DBT more effective. This will help everyone in targeted, transparent and leakage free delivery," the Prime Minister said while launching e-RUPI.
Not only the government, if any general organisation or organisation wants to help someone in their treatment, in their education or for any other work, then they will be able to give eRUPI instead of cash, he said.
This will ensure that the money given by him is used for the same work for which that amount has been given, he added.
Launching e-RUPI. Watch. https://t.co/JeQo93yZXM
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 2, 2021
e-RUPI is a cashless and contactless instrument for digital payment, an official statement said, adding, it is a QR code or SMS string-based e-voucher, which is delivered to the mobile of the beneficiaries.
The users of this seamless one-time payment mechanism will be able to redeem the voucher without a card, digital payments app or internet banking access, at the service provider, it said.
It has been developed by the National Payments Corporation of India on its UPI platform, in collaboration with the Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare and National Health Authority.
According to sources, the responsibility of the programme is to be distributed among the private operators like BSNL, Reliance Jio, Vodafone, Idea Cellular and Airtel. The main aim of the assignment is to provide high-speed internet connectivity to the rural and semi-urban areas across the nation.
With an aim to provide digital connectivity to the rural areas the government has started laying optic fiber network in many Gram Panchayats across the nation.
As per latest reports, the government has successfully reached around 75,000 Gram Panchayats by now and aims to reach 1 lakh Gram Panchayats by the end of this year.
While in many countries, Wi-Fi is considered as chief element for the digital foundation of a nation but an apathetic growth is experienced in India with only 31,000 hotspots in 2016 in comparison to other digitally developed countries like US and UK which has nearly 98 lakh, and 56 lakh hotspots respectively.
Meanwhile, to carry out the Project, a high-level meeting was called by telecom ministry, involving key representatives from various state governments to discuss about the methodologies and ways to provide digital service to various sectors like education, health, rural development etc.
As per sources, the government aims to have around three Wi-Fi hotspots per Gram Panchayat providing 1GB of data usage per day.
The app which has been indigenously designed by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) links one's Aadhar number and allows android users to carry their Aadhaar demographic information i.e. name, date of birth, gender and address along with his/her photograph.
Presently the app is available in Google Play and functions with some limited services as it operates as a beta version and users can explore its full usages only after subsequent updates.
The special feature of the app is that it comes with a TOTP (Time-based One-Time Password) process instead of conventional SMS based OTP. It also features a biometric locking/unlocking service through which the registered user can only choose to access it.
Further, Quick Response (QR) code facility which enables direct internet links and information communication along with password protected e-KYC data are some other features of the app.
Having a registered mobile number is a must for using “mAadhar” app and in case one does not have a registration can do so at designated nearest Aadhaar Enrolment Centres or Mobile Update End Points.
The company, in an invite sent to media on Tuesday, said that Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Thomas Kurian, Google Cloud CEO, along with other leading tech leaders will officially announce the second India GCP region on July 15.
"With reduced latency and improved availability, businesses can now innovate faster, build high-performing applications, and better serve customers by taking advantage of a smarter, open, and trusted cloud," the tech giant said.
"Join us in building India's digital future," the invite read.
Google launched the Mumbai region in 2017.
The company last year announced plans to open its second Cloud region in India -- in Delhi-NCR -- and help regulated industries such as healthcare and financial services, as well as public sector organisations across the country achieve their cloud goal.
As the company's customers in India grow and diversify, Google cloud regions bring Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services to organisations in industries like media and entertainment, retail and manufacturing.
The new region will also include a portfolio of key GCP products, offer lower latency to nearby users, and, when combined with the existing region in Mumbai, enable geographically separate in-country disaster recovery for the customers' mission-critical applications.
After Pichai committed $10 billion to drive India go digital, Kurian said last year during an interaction that they are not only committed to grow deeper in the India market but also aggressively invest to increase its Cloud footprint and empower enterprises in the country.
Kurian said that the company continues to expand its global footprint, opening several new regions over the last year, with plans for many more and India is on his priority list.
The launch was carried out virtually by Union Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, and the Finance Minister of Bhutan, Lyonpo Namgay Tshering.
Speaking on the occasion, Sitharaman said that the services have been started in Bhutan under India's neighbourhood first policy and the country is proud and happy to share them with its valued neighbour.
The Finance Minister said that BHIM UPI has been one of the brightest spots and an achievement for digital transactions in India during the Covid-19 pandemic with more than 100 million UPI QRs being created in the last five years, while in 2020-21 alone, it processed 22 billion transactions worth Rs 41 lakh crore.
The Finance Minister of Bhutan, Lyonpo Namgay Tshering, thanked and appreciated the Government of India for the launch of BHIM-UPI services in Bhutan and added that the bond between the two countries is becoming stronger each passing day.
The launch fulfils the commitment made by the two countries during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Bhutan in 2019. Following that visit, India and Bhutan have already enabled inter-operability in acceptance of Rupay cards in each other's countries in two phases -- acceptance of Rupay cards issued in India at Bhutan based terminals in the first phase, and vice versa in the second phase.
With the launch of BHIM-UPI in Bhutan, the payment infrastructures of the two countries are seamlessly connected and will benefit a large number of tourists and businessmen from India who travel to Bhutan each year. This will also enhance the ease of living and ease of travelling through cashless transactions at the touch of a button.
As a part of the launch, Sitharaman also made a live transaction using BHIM-UPI to purchase an organic product from a Bhutanese OGOP outlet, which sells fresh farm produce made organically by the local communities in Bhutan.
The RBI guidelines say that all digital payment firms like Google Pay, WhatsApp and others must store data locally for their businesses in the country. The deadline to comply with the norms ended on Monday.
In a statement, WhatsApp said that in India, almost 1 million people are testing WhatsApp payments to send money to each other in a simple and secure way.
"In response to India's payments data circular, we've built a system that stores payments-related data locally in India," a WhatsApp spokesperson told IANS.
"WhatsApp payment is useful for people in their daily lives and we hope to expand the feature to all of India soon so we can contribute to the country's financial inclusion goals," the spokesperson added, without mentioning if the Facebook-owned company has finally submitted a compliance report sought by the RBI.
With over 200 million users, India is the largest market for WhatsApp.
Google Pay has also reportedly asked the government for more time on this. An email sent to Google on this went unanswered.
In September, Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai wrote to IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, advocating free flow of data across borders as such a step will encourage global companies to contribute to India's digital economy.
Pichai said that the free flow of data across borders would also benefit Indian start-ups looking to expand globally.
"Free flow of data across borders -- with a focus on user privacy and security -- will encourage start-ups to innovate and expand globally and encourage global companies to contribute to India's digital economy," Pichai wrote.
"The Google team in India will be in touch with your office to follow up on some of the specific topics we discussed during our meeting," said Pichai, thanking Prasad for his visit in August to Google's Mountain View campus in the US.
On Monday, sources said the government is not in favour of extending the deadline for RBI's data localisation plan. "The government is also not in favour of the data-mirroring idea," they added.
According to India's largest digital payment provider Paytm, all payments data of the Indian users must be processed and stored only within the country and must not be allowed to go out of the country, not even for processing.
"We have complied with this mandate since day one and have welcomed this initiative right from the beginning," a Paytm spokesperson told IANS.
"It is important that we do not become mere Internet colonies for global companies and make every organisation accountable towards the security and privacy of data of our fellow countrymen," the spokesperson added.
This is a key matter of national interest, said Paytm, adding that we must discourage inappropriate use and transfer of data.
"During the Summit, the Prime Ministers pledged to deepen cooperation between India and the Nordic countries and focused their discussions on key issues related to global security, economic growth, innovation and climate change," the Indian External Affairs Ministry said in a statement following the meeting.
"They acknowledged that innovation and digital transformation drive growth in an interconnected world, which underpin a growing engagement between India and the Nordic countries," it stated.
"The Summit emphasized the India's strong commitment to innovation and digital initiatives as key to prosperity and sustainable development, with national flagship programmes such as Make in India, Start-up India, Digital India and Clean India."
Ahead of the Summit, Modi held separate bilateral meetings with his counterparts from Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Finland.
Modi held the first meeting with Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen.
In a tweet, Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said the two leaders "had a good meeting on renewing and enhancing cooperation and expressed their mutual desire to take the relationship forward".
After the meeting, the two sides exchanged MoUs in the areas of urban development, animal husbandry and dairying, food safety and agricultural research and education.
Modi then met his Icelandic counterpart Katrin Jakobsdottir.
"PM urged Icelandic companies to look at India as an investment destination in blue economy and geothermal energy and strengthen cooperation in education, tourism and culture," Kumar said.
Following the meeting, the two sides signed an MoU on the establishment of an ICCR Chair for Hindi language between the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and the University of Iceland.
Modi then held a meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg.
According to the Indian spokesperson, the two leaders had an "engaging interaction" on trade and investment, shipping and port-development, blue economy, renewable energy, health, information technology and green transport solutions.
Finally, the Indian leader met Finnish Prime Minister Juhu Sipila.
"We had excellent discussions on deepening avenues of cooperation between India and Finland," Modi said in a separate tweet.
India and Sweden co-hosted the India-Nordic Summit on the second and final day of Modi's visit to Sweden.
For India, Nordic countries are a potential source for clean technology, environmental solutions, port modernisation, cold chain, skill development, innovation among other areas.
According to figures provided by the Indian External Affairs Ministry, India's trade with the Nordic countries totaled around $5.3 billion in 2016-17, with cumulative foreign direct investment in India at $2.5 billion.
Earlier on Tuesday, Modi held a bilateral summit with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven following which India and Sweden signed a Joint Action Plan and an Innovation Partnership for a Sustainable Future.
According to Kevin Martin, Vice President for Mobile and Global Access Policy at Facebook, the government's digital initiative has opened several opportunities when it comes to innovate and build for the country.
"In India, 201 million people are active on Facebook. The country is home to one of the world's largest developers' community. There are over two million SMB (Small and Medium Business) Pages on Facebook in India," Martin said during one of the plenary sessions at the first-ever 'India Mobile Congress 2017' here.
Before joining Facebook, Martin worked as Chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
A recent survey by Facebook revealed that while 43 per cent of Indian exporters in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) depend on online tools for 75 per cent of their international sales, 63 per cent agree that using online tools for selling internationally has increased their revenue.
"More than 270 million people around the world are connected to a small business in India. These businesses are using technology to grow, build new opportunities and find customers at home and abroad," said Ankhi Das, Director of Public Policy for Facebook India and South Asia, recently.
Launching the NG-OTN here, Minister of State for Communications Manoj Sinha lauded the BSNL for upgrading its network to provide modern technology-based Ultra Fast Broadband services to the country.
Sinha said the government has set a target to provide broadband connectivity to 2,50,000 village panchayats by December 2018 and so far more than 1,00,000 villages have been covered with Optical Fiber Broadband connectivity.
The newly-launched 100 Gigabit-OTN will also help service central projects like BharatNet, SWAN, NKN etc.
Sinha added that NG-OTN will cover 100 cities in India with a capital outlay of Rs 330 crore for the project.
The infrastructure in 45 of the 100 cities is already put in place and started operating the NG-OTN on Friday while the rest would become functional under NG-OTN by March 2018.
The project also aims to provide a 99.99 per cent uptime for which a Network Operating Centre is made operational at Bengaluru for giving round-the-clock support.
Besides, it will enhance the BSNL's existing 10G capacity Optical Fibre infrastructure to 100G which would help retail customer base of BSNL in landline, Fiber to the home (FTTH) and mobile services, boost Enterprise Business Segment by providing ultra high capacity in lease lines.
Speaking on the occasion, BSNL Chairman and Managing Director Anupam Srivastava said it has a total customer base of around 115 million and NG-OTN is a step forward to ensure customer delight.
He said the collaboration between BSNL and Fiber Home will provide several such projects to the country.
The initiative is also aimed at expanding the diffusion and use of ICT as a tool to expand economic opportunity, boost productivity, create jobs, and empower citizens, according to a joint press statement issued after a two-day meeting of a joint working group.
The US-India Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Working Group promotes development in the ICT sector for mutual benefit.
The Participants noted that the ICT Working Group aims to strengthen collaboration between the governments and private sector of the two countries in the field of Information and Communications Technology.
During the two-day working group meeting, US and Indian government representatives held extensive discussions on ICT and telecommunication policy issues.
These focused on accelerating broadband deployment, aligning spectrum policy for the mobile era and exchanging views on internet governance and best practices in ICT and telecommunications regulatory policy.
They also discussed issues relating to the international mobility of Indian skilled professionals, the joint statement noted.
The Joint government-and-industry discussions included panels on promoting manufacturing and investment; IT and telecom policy developments; Internet governance; mobility of skilled professionals and other issues related to trade, investment, and the ease of doing
business.
A panel of non-government experts also shared insights on strategies that may help India achieve the goals outlined in the 'Make in India' and 'Digital India' initiatives.
Broad agreement was reached on the importance of policies that promote innovation in the ICT sector, facilitate the flow of data across borders, and foster the global and open nature of the Internet as a platform for economic growth, according to the joint statement.
Participants agreed to continue discussion of policies that stimulate rapid diffusion and use of ICT products and services and facilitate cross border trade that reduces costs to consumers and businesses.
In this context, the US side noted the Indian concerns with regard to mobility of skilled Indian professionals, and agreed that the US government will continue to engage on visa issues for skilled professionals.
In addition, the Indian side noted the US concerns relating to equipment testing and certification, and agreed to engage on issues relating to equipment testing.
Daniel A. Sepulveda, Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy at the US Department of State and R.S. Sharma, Secretary of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, led the US and Indian delegations, respectively.
The US and India plan to hold the next US-India ICT Working Group in India later this year.
When a latest report by well known research outfit Cyber Media Research revealed the smartphone penetration in Odisha at around 45 per cent, latest TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) report revealed that data usage per subscriber per month in Odisha stood at a staggering 7.5 GB vis-a-vis the national average of 7.4 GB in 2018.
In smartphone penetration, Odisha has not only remained ahead of BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) states but has also beaten advanced states like Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Haryana.
Similarly, in the all important indicator of per subscriber per month usage, Odisha struts marginally ahead of the advanced states like Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. It's only a slice below Maharashtra (7.8GB).
However, Bihar and Assam gallop faster than Odisha on data highway with a rate of 8 GB and 7.9 GB, respectively, when both the states have smartphone penetration lower than Odisha.
As per the TRAI data, the wireless data subscriber base by the end of 2018 in Odisha stood at 14.20 million vis-a-vis of 10.67 million in Assam. Though Bihar's subscriber base is shown at 35.60 mn, the fact is the LSA (Licensed Service Area) Bihar included Jharkhand.
It has been observed that the data subscriber base of Odisha saw a net addition of 4 million vis-a-vis of 12 mn addition in Andhra Pradesh and 10 mn in Rajasthan.
Why the addition in Odisha is slower comparatively? An analysis shows that poorer states recorded a fewer addition to their data subscriber base in comparison to their better off counterparts. Assam, another poverty rich state, could see addition of mere 2 mn new subscribers.
The big reason: As per the expert group headed by former RBI governor C Rangarajan, The new poverty line for rural areas is nearly Rs 32 and for urban areas is Rs 47. Accordingly, the monthly income for 28 days for such citizens for urban areas is Rs 1,316 and for rural areas Rs 896.
However, to access data, the minimum tariff plan available to customers is around Rs 49, which includes free voice, SMS and 1 GB data every 28 days. This implies to around 4-5 per cent of the monthly income - more than a day's income- of such consumers, which is a considerable cost for the BPL people.
And as per latest UNDP-Oxford's Multidimensional Povert Index (MPI), nearly 36 per cent people live below poverty line in the State. And Odisha, along with Assam, ranked as the poorest regions in the country.
Following a low subscriber base, the State languishes in the bottom -10, among 21 states, in annual data usage. The annual data usage in Odisha has been put at 1,134.2 million GB in 2018, which is a 139 per cent jump from 2017 vis-a-vis an average spike of 131 per cent nationally.
The mammoth nationwide exercise will be carried out in 16 languages and at a cost of Rs 12,000 crore, he said after laying the foundation stone of a new building of the Registrar General of India and Census Commissioner here.
The census will have its reference date as March 1, 2021, but for snow-bound Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand it will be October 1, 2020, Shah said.
"Census data will be collected through a mobile app. This is for the first time that the mobile app will be used for the census exercise. India will be moving from the pen and paper census to digital data, which will be a big revolution in the country's census exercise," he said.
Referring to the 2021 census, he said the data will help in future planning of the country, especially for development initiatives and welfare schemes, and it will be a 'Jan Bhagidari' (people's participation) exercise.
"India's total 130 crore population should be informed about its benefits. How, the census data could be used for future planning, development initiatives and welfare schemes. The utilisation of census data is multi-dimensional and will be a significant contribution to the nation's progress," Shah said.
The home minister also said the census will help in demarcating boundaries of municipal wards, assemblies and Lok Sabha constituencies.
He appealed to census officials to carry out the exercise sincerely as this is an opportunity for them to do 'Punya' (holy deed), which will help in nation building.
Earlier the government used to do welfare schemes on a piecemeal basis and no comprehensive planning was done by previous governments, Shah said.
"The whole approach was changed when Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014. The approach has been changed completely, the thinking has been changed. Goals have been set to completely eradicate the problems," he said.
The home minister said on the basis of the 2011 Census, the Modi government had planned 22 welfare schemes related to electricity connection to every home, gas connections, construction of roads, houses for the poor, toilets, bank accounts and opening of bank branches among others.
He cited the example of the government's flagship 'Ujjwala' scheme of providing free LPG connection to poor families, saying it has been successful as the scheme was prepared on the basis of the 2011 census data.
"By 2022, there will not be a family which will not have gas connection," he said.
Shah also said the 2011 census reflected the poor sex ratio of male and female in some states. That is why the programme of 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' was launched, he said.
"Under this scheme, the Haryana government has done so much work in the last five years that the state's sex ratio is now among the best in the country," he said.
The home minister said India's population is 17.5 per cent of the world's total population while the geographical area is just 2.4 per cent of the total geographical area of the world.
"So, naturally, India has limited natural resources in comparison to the population. Therefore, to fill up this gap of inequality, we will have to work hard," he said.
Shah also said the data for the National Population Register (NPR), a list of usual residents of the country, will also be collected along with the census exercise.
Officials said the NPR could be the basis for a pan-India version of Assam's National Register of Citizens (NRC).
According to Credit Suisse report, India's mobile payments market is likely to touch $1 trillion by 2022.
Post the demonetisation, whereby Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8, 2016, declared that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination notes would become invalid, digital transactions shot up tremendously. The Unified Payment Interface (UPI) also has been accepted well.
Despite the rise in the number of platforms that enable businesses to offer online payment experience to their customers regardless of location, instrument or mode, still there is a long way ahead as the penetration has mostly been in tier I cities.
RBI expects the country will have five million active point of sale (PoS) machines by the end of 2021. However, to achieve it, there are several hurdles to be crossed.
"Although the awareness and adoption of digital payments is increasing, the digital infrastructure needs to be strengthened further to ensure consistent reach and penetration across the Tier II and Tier III cities along with rural areas," says, Sunil Khosla, Head Digital Business, India Transact Service Limited.
According to Manish Patel, Founder and CEO of Mswipe, there is a need for easy and cost-effective payment acceptance tools for small and medium enterprises, micro-merchants, especially in tier-III and III cities as a segment, is still under-penetrated.
"They need acceptance tools that are cost-effective and easy to enable. In many cases, it is cumbersome for a micro-merchant to keep tabs of different means like wallets, UPI and bank apps," Patel said.
A huge market has grown for products which enable vendors to accept payments through credit and debit cards. However, the ground reality is that although there are around 100 crore credit and debit cards in the country, the number of PoS terminals is not enough.
Digital payments service providers and adoption of UPI platform by national and international players like Paytm, PhonePe, Google, WhatsApp and Amazon have played a major role in the transition of rural India along with the urban segment in terms of digital payments.
Issues which merchants face are generally related to initial investment and the recurring cost affiliated with acceptance, which can be mitigated by the introduction of low-cost devices or device-less acceptance via payment apps for accepting Bharat QR or UPI payments.
Experts further say MSMEs can generate extra income by offering the entire digital ecosystem with options such as Bharat Bill Payments System (BBPS), Point of Sale machines and micro ATMs along with the digital payment wallets and platforms and payment banks.
"The acceptance of digital payment collection services can be further improved by simplifying and speeding up of the onboarding process, consistently educating the merchant and consumers on the benefit of accepting digital payments, the various factors featuring in the digital ecosystem and few risks attached to the same," Khosla said.
Market players and sector experts are of the opinion that EMI (equated monthly instalments) on debit card is going to be the game changer. As only a small section of the population has access to formal loans, EMI on debit card can tap this market and play a significant role. It would encourage consumers to shift to digital payments and opt for easy EMI options. This also enables merchants to offer more affordability solutions to their consumers.
Vicky Bindra, CEO of Pine Labs says: "At a time when our country has set an ambitious growth target in the volume of digital payments, migrating smaller merchants to digital payments holds a key. Hence in order to improve the acceptance of digital payment solutions among merchants, financial services need to create services and refine existing solutions."
"It is equally important to educate and create a sense of trust and secure digital payments amongst 500-600 million consumers based out of tier II and tier III cities in India," Bindra said.
Continuing its attack on the regulator and old operators over the contentious IUC (interconnect usage charge) issue that has polarised the industry, Jio alleged that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) move is arbitrary, bad in law, unwarranted, and anti-poor.
Any change in implementation of original timeline of January 1, 2020 will end the free voice regime and is likely to increase tariffs which are against consumer interest, Jio claimed.
Typically, a telecom operator pays for completing calls made by its subscribers to a rival network. This is done by paying the rival network an interconnect usage charge, which currently is 6 paise per minute.
TRAI’s move to reopen the deadline for ending charges for terminating calls on rival networks beyond January 2020 had forced Jio to levy a 6 paisa per minute charge on its users recently, effectively ending its free call regime.
Submitting its official response to TRAI on the IUC matter, Jio alleged that “certain incumbent telcos” want their large body of 2G customers to forever remain digitally disempowered and deprived of the fruits of the digital revolution. Trai’s consultation paper “protects and perpetuates the vested interests” of such players, it added.
Jio accused certain old operators of exploiting their 2G customers by charging “extortionist rates” for voice calls, which are offered free to all Jio’s 4G-only customers.
“The Consultation Paper...undermines and sabotages Prime Minister’s Digital India vision and mission,” Jio said in its comment to Trai’s consultation paper.
It is unfortunate that instead of profiting the poor and marginalised sections of Indian society, the consultation paper has chosen to help profiteers in the telecom business, Jio alleged.
The discussion paper wants India to remain technologically stagnant and backward, the company said.
The move contradicts the authority’s past decisions where it was represented that the zero termination charge regime would come into effect for all types of calls from January 1, 2020, Jio said.
It added that the ongoing review, which violates the principles of regulatory predictability, has been initiated with pre-determined mind.
“...the present Consultation Paper has not been issued to address traffic asymmetry, but to address the claimed financial stress of one or two operators at the cost of the interests of the subscribers and the telecom sector, and also the credibility of the authority,” it said.
The latest entrant, known for its disruptive tariffs, argued the present trend indicates that traffic asymmetry (one of the key reasons for Trai’s rethink on IUC) is expected to be reversed in a few months and the present receivers will become payers, and so deferring stated timelines is not going to steer any operator away from the purported financial stress. Moving to zero termination charge regime will reduce overall tariffs for customers, Jio said.
Jio said that had TRAI “recalculated termination charges, it would be less than 1 paise per minute at this stage”, and added that the small residual value by itself fully justifies the need for moving to zero termination charge regime.
Jio cautioned that TRAI’s move will have a “chilling effect” on any new investments and future new entrants who will be deterred by this entry barrier, and even as the advanced world will move towards 5G, India will continue promoting 2G and keep millions of users out of Digital India.
“There exists no rationale for changing the date of implementation of BAK (bill and keep) regime from January 1, 2020,” Jio added.
While the one-month pack would cost a user Rs 222, the two-month plan comes at Rs 333 and the three month plan would set you back by Rs 444.
"When compared to Jio's existing 2GB/per day plan, the three-month 2GB per day pack will now cost only Rs 444 instead of Rs 448 with additional 1,000 minutes of offnet IUC minutes which would have come at nearly Rs 80 separately," Reliance Jio said in a statement.
Similarly, the two-month plan will now cost Rs 333 against the earlier cost of Rs 396 with additional 1,000 minutes outgoing calls which would cost Rs 80 separately with IUC charges.
As in the other new plans, the monthly plan also includes IUC charges worth Rs 80. But the cost of the monthly plan has gone up to Rs 222 from Rs 198.
"The new plans are the cheapest in the market. They are 20-50 per cent cheaper than existing competition plans," Reliance Jio said.
The new applications includes:
CRS Sanction Management System: It’s an important aspect in construction, maintenance and up-gradation of railway assets. Under the online application, all works pertaining to level crossings (closure, manning, shifting etc.) and minor bridges can be monitored. Further modules under development in this application are increase of speed over Turnouts & Loop Lines, inspection of new lines and doubling etc.
This will ensure expeditious preparation and processing of cases for CRS Sanction, effective monitoring of compliance of observations raised by the CRS, On-Line Repository of circulars/check-lists/guidelines related to CRS Sanction and Managerial reports to monitor the cases, comparative performance.
Rail-road crossing GAD approval system: This project for online e-Governance platform was developed by Ministry of Railways and Ministry of Road Transport & Highways to expedite preparation, processing & approval of General Agreement Drawings (GADs) related to construction of Road Over Bridges (ROB)/Road Under Bridges (RUB). It has been running successfully since 2014. Now, a module has been developed to cover cases of construction of ROBs/RUBs for States & UTs also.
The accountability of Railways and State Governments/UTs is fixed to each stage for approval of proposals. The project will ensure better and real time coordination between the stakeholders (Railways/States). Besides, it will also facilitates users to get proposal status through mail and SMS at each stage, complete proposal is targeted to be approved in maximum of 60 days.
TMS for construction: This application has been developed for new assets being constructed by the construction/project organisation. The assets master data can now be regularly filled during the stage of construction and completion of assets, by the construction officials before itself final scrutiny and test check by the open line officials. Through the application, data can be validated and corrected at source. Fact checking/ verification of data will also be easier.
When Digital India took birth, little did we know that in an unprecedented situation like a total lockdown, the apps and services that helped us sail through the day with ease will immediately hang up on millions.
From Uber to Ola, Swiggy to Zomato and Bigbasket to Grofers -- and thousands of app-based services in between -- the digital dream has taken a 21-day long pause, and workers in the digital industry are in for job losses along with deep salary cuts.
Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal has announced that several employees have taken deep voluntary salary cuts as the business has been hit owing to the COVID-19 lockdown.
Uber and Ola drivers are confined to their homes and delivery boys for food and online grocery delivery platforms are afraid to come out on roads owing to the fear or being beaten up.
Uber India has reportedly given no help to its driver partners as of now, other than telling its employees to do yoga at home.
Ola has reportedly taken the next step, asking the government to waive the loans of its drivers and delay the tax payments for them so that they can survive the Novel Coronavirus onslaught. The company, however, refused to comment on the reports.
Read More: Coronavirus Impact: Uber, Ola Suspend Pool Ride Service In India
According to the ride-hailing company, it is providing certain insurance and medical benefits to its drivers as well as waiving rental charges.
"We can confirm that we are fully waiving away lease rentals, akin to an EMI, for driver partners who operate vehicles owned by Ola's subsidiary, Ola Fleet Technologies under its leasing programme," Ola said in a statement.
The company also said it will give benefits on insurance for drivers and their spouses against loss of income due to contraction of COVID-19, as well as other medical support during this time will continue to be offered to all its driver-partners across the country.
Thousands of daily-wage workers, low-end hotel staff and delivery boys have left metros for their home towns -- some even on bikes -- as establishments locked themselves.
Smartphone-based leading food delivery platforms Zomato and Swiggy are in almost in no man's land -- with thin presence amid huge manpower shortage.
Bigbasket and Grofers are unable to fulfil orders owing to huge supply-demand issue along with thin delivery staff to go out and deliver.
All eyes are now on the government to bail the online service providers from this mess.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday indicated that concerns of India Inc, small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) segments and other segments hit by the lockdown might be looked at and the government could announce a plan later.
"Our first priority is to provide food to the poor and money in their hands. We will think about other things later," she said.
The three winning teams were selected from over 7,000 students from more than 1,000 universities in India. Google supported students to build their prototypes by providing them access to curated content across technologies like mobile, web, machine learning and cloud.
The three teams are The Third Eye from MIT world Peace University, Maharashtra for their theme 'Smart Cities and Infrastructure'; Anukai Solutions from Chitkara University, Punjab for the theme 'Smart Cities & Infrastructure'; and ISpeakFree.LY team from Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Maharashtra for the theme 'Accessibility & Disability'.
"We congratulate these student teams and every student that participated in this six-month journey. We are confident that their entrepreneurial spirit and innovative solutions will help address areas that are core to India's challenges," said Paul Ravindranath, Programme Manager, Google India Developer Relations.
Out of over 3,000 project submissions, Google shortlisted 61 projects to attend an in-person mentorship boot camps across four cities in India.
Based on feedback shared by the mentors, the top 15 projects were shortlisted, before selecting the three winners.
"We are glad to see the result of the strong collaboration between MeitY and Google in mentoring and upskilling over 7,000 engineering and technology students with more than 3,000 strong ideas and prototypes that aim to solve for India," said Abhishek Singh, CEO, MyGov, Ministry of Electronics and IT.
The programme offers a platform for engineering students to develop market-ready, technology-based solutions that address key social problems.
(IANS)
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The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology along with the Atal Innovation Mission have come up with this challenge, which will run in two tracks -- promotion of existing apps and development of new apps.
"For the promotion of existing apps and platforms across the categories of e-learning, work-from-home, gaming, business, entertainment, office utilities and social networking, the government will provide mentoring, hand-holding and support.
"Track-01 will work in mission mode for identifying good quality apps for the leader-board and shall be completed in around a month," said a statement issued the Prime Minister in his LinkedIn account.
For new apps, Track-02 initiative will work to help create new champions in India by providing support in ideation, incubation, prototyping and rollout along with market access.
This challenge will help create tech products to find solutions to tech conundrums with mentorship. Interestingly, the challenge comes in the wake of India banning 59 Chinese apps citing national security considerations.
"I urge all my friends in the tech community to participate and help create an aatmanirbhar app ecosystem. Who knows, I may also use some of these apps made by you," said the Prime Minister with a smiley.
This challenge is for you if you have such a working product or if you feel you have the vision and expertise to create such products. I urge all my friends in the tech community to participate.
Sharing my thoughts in my @LinkedIn post. https://t.co/aO5cMYi4SH
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) July 4, 2020
The Prime Minister said India's tech ecosystem had made it proud and the pandemic had brought about disruption in the tech world.
Connecting it with the 'self-reliant India', he said, "Today, when the entire nation is working towards creating an Aatmanirbhar Bharat, it's a good opportunity to give direction to their efforts, momentum to their hard-work and mentorship to their talent to evolve apps which can satisfy our market as well as compete with the world."
Stating that the goal is to Make in India for India as well for the World, the Prime Minister using the sectoral parlance said, "Let us code for an Aatmanirbhar Bharat!."
Today there is immense enthusiasm among the tech & start-up community to create world class Made in India Apps. To facilitate their ideas and products @GoI_MeitY and @AIMtoInnovate are launching the Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge. https://t.co/h0xqjEwPko
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) July 4, 2020
(IANS)
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As many as 10-15 startups with leading-edge solutions in mobility, energy, agriculture, aerospace, manufacturing, consumer, healthtech, medtech, smart cities and logistics and supply chain sectors will be shortlisted as part of the programme, T-Hub said in a statement.
The call for application for the programme will commence in July. Startups will be shortlisted from hundreds of applications after an extensive screening process, T-Hub added.
"India has already developed a reputation for its expertise in the software technology space. We are beginning to see startups emerging in the hardware space that are solving important problems," said Ravi Narayan, CEO of T-Hub and Telangana Chief Innovation Officer.
"T-Hub brings its matured acceleration programme with access to customers, investors and specialized mentors," he added.
The batch of startups will go through regular interventions through bootcamps and dedicated mentoring organised by T-Hub.
During the programme, startups will get exposure to design/enhance their hardware.
In addition, they will receive mentorship in areas such as pricing, go-to-market strategies, fund raising, among others.
As part of the programme, the shortlisted startups will also receive equity-free grants, T-Hub said.
"It is important for us to engage the startup community and bring innovative thinking into product development that can accelerate the creation of new offerings in the hardware space," said Ajai Garg, CEO of MeitY Startup Hub.
(IANS)
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The report titled 'Empowering payments': Digital India on the path of revolution' said that with global transaction value for digital payments expected to reach $12.4 trillion by 2025, India is expected to contribute 2.2 per cent of the world's digital payment market by 2023 alone.
Underlining UPI is among the largest real-time payment systems in the world, the report estimates the home-grown platform to reach nearly 59 billion transactions in volume by 2023, owing to its high P2P type of transaction penetration.
"Clocking over 1 billion transactions every month, the platform has witnessed a CAGR of 785 per cent in volume and 570 per cent in terms of value from financial year FY 2017 to FY 2020," it said.
As per the report, India is one of the fastest-growing countries in the world, showing rapid progression in the transformation of digital payments, largely due to its large population and demographics.
It has been attracting significant investments from private equity and venture capital firms and other international payment companies that want to enter India in the near future.
According to the report, India has been identified as a leader across parameters -- regulation of costs of payment systems, laws in place, availability of alternate payment systems, share of e-money in payment systems among others.
With the sharp rise in demand for contactless payments increasing amid the pandemic, businesses are looking at integrating their online and offline channels to provide an omni-channel experience to its customers.
From the statistics of UPI, BBPS and NETC for the months of February to June 2020, the report suggested that a V-shaped recovery in the digital payment sector is being prompted.
(IANS)
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After seeing a steep decline in 2020 owing to the pandemic, travel industry grew by 50 per cent while real estate was up by 69 per cent in the first three months of this year.
As tourism opened up, Jammu and Kashmir made it to the top 10 �Digitally Inclusive States/Union Territories’ for the first time, with a growth of 36 per cent in online transactions in the January-March period, ranking above Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana, according to data provided by full-stack financial solutions company Razorpay in its �The Era of Rising Fintech’ report.
Payment options such as Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) saw a whopping growth of 569 per cent in the last 12 months, owing to consumers avoiding bulk payments and preferring affordable payment modes.
UPI continues to be the preferred payment option followed by debit Cards, credit cards and netbanking.
“Over 50 per cent of this digital adoption is coming from Tier 2 & 3 cities today, which indicates that this is not just an urban phenomenon. Small Businesses are providing newer payment methods and reaching out to a wider customer base that transcends geographical boundaries,” said Vedanarayan Vedantham, Head of SME business, Razorpay.
In the last few months, consumers have increasingly been ordering online and F&B industry witnessed growth of 69per cent from January to March.
“Schools, colleges and online educational institutes have increasingly been accepting online payments for fees and salary payments, reflecting a 40 per cent growth in online transactions,” the report mentioned.
Seventy-one per cent of users preferred Amazon over rival Flipkart which stood at 22 per cent. Only 5 per cent of those surveyed preferred to go basis price alone.
In the lucrative online grocery sweepstakes, 67 per cent said they had tried JioMart. Of these 47 per cent said they will go to the app again, while 20 per cent were iffy. 21 percent preferred Grofers/Big Basket.
In digital payments, 53 per cent preferred Paytm, while 28 per cent batted for Google Pay. 14 per cent lean towards PhonePe.
Sixty-eight per cent said they were comfortable with digital payments.
As for streaming habits, 53 per cent said they preferred YouTube mainly. 15 per cent/13 per cent/ 10 percent pitched for Netflix/Amazon Prime/Disney. 6 percent preferred Jio TV/Jio Cinema.
In music streaming, JioSaavn was preferred by 31 percent even as Spotify and Gaana were not too far at 26 percent and 25 percent respectively. 11 percent preferred Bharti Wynk.
In their online food habits, as many as 69 per cent confirmed that they have increased online ordering from eateries. 56 per cent displayed an intent to continue doing so for the next six months.
Seventy per cent showed adaptation to edu-tech. Here Byju's lead the pack at 38 per cent. Unacademy and Vedanta were at 35 per cent and 29 per cent. Embibe, owned by Reliance, was being used by 9 per cent.
Seventy-eight per cent of those surveyed were already doing online gaming in some form. Fifty-four per cent preferred mobile games, while 16 per cent/8 per cent preferred fantasy gaming/e-sports.
Forty-nine per cent were using smart watches to map their health while 20 per cent were tracking via mobile phones.
Cab hailing was equally split between Ola and Uber. Indicative of these times, 52 per cent felt they wouldn't come near a shared cab.
Structurally, BofA researchers reported higher propensity among those surveyed to shop online, use digital payments, and continue work from home (WFH) even post Covid. They saw this adaptation as positive for valuations of Bharti and Jio Platforms.
BofA commissioned Survey Monkey for this research.
A thousand folks were interviewed. Of these 51 per cent were males. Twenty per cent were between 18-29 years old. Forty-six per cent were between 30 and 44. Twenty-three per cent were between 45 and 60. The rest (3 percent) were above 60. As for income, 17 per cent made more than Rs 75,000 per month. Twenty-five percent earned between Rs 50,000 and Rs 75,000; 35 per cent had an income between Rs 25,000 and Rs 50,000, and 22 per cent earned less than Rs 25,000.
(IANS)
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