Target is to have technology 20 to 25 per cent of the Indian GDP by 2025-26: IT minister Chandrasekhar

Washington, June 19

The Indian Government has set a goal of making technology 20-25 per cent of the nation’s GDP by 2025, India’s IT minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar has told Indian-American entrepreneurs and asked them to be part of this story of India.

Over the last nine years, digital economy has expanded, diversified and currently there isn’t a slice or space in the tech sector that Indian entrepreneurs, Indian start-ups are not present in; whether it is semiconductors, micro-electronics, AI, the blockchain and web three high-performance computing languages and consumer internet, Chandrasekhar said in his virtual address to the annual conference of the Global Indian Technology Professionals Association.

“Any part of technology that you look at today, there is significant presence and momentum by Indian start-ups, Indian enterprises and Indian innovators. Over the last five years, in particular, during and after Covid-19, the Indian innovation economy has grown from the four-five per cent in 2014 to 10 per cent today,” he said.

“Our target is that technology and the digital economy would be 20 per cent of the total GDP, which also is growing at about eight per cent, 7.5 per cent per annum by 2025-2026. So, 20 per cent of our GDP, which will be about USD 5 trillion, amounts to a trillion dollars and that is the goal that we are working on. That is the mission that Prime Minister Modi’s government is focused on,” Chandrasekhar said.

Describing AI as a kinetic enabler of the digital economy, the minister said it is a very important and valuable layer on the progress that has been made by the start-ups and innovation ecosystem over the last several years around the consumer internet and the data economy. The government has branded the artificial intelligence programmes and schemes in the country as India AI.