Govt Hopes To Create India’s Alibaba

Union Minister and BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad India can have its own Alibaba in the e-commerce industry if the government successfully rolls out its Digital India Project. Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology (IT), Ravi Shankar Prasad made the projection at an event organized by ASSOCHAM.

“As Flipkart is growing so big, as we see the success of Alibaba and as we see the aspirational India evolving with great enthusiasm particularly in rural areas, I see a vast opportunity for eCommerce,” said Union Minister Prasad.

He added that he expects several services to be available in the country through e-commerce especially in the warehousing sector. “I see almost an explosion of various kind of availability of services through eCommerce, particularly you will have warehouses,” said Union Minister Prasad.

Talking about Digital India Programme, which was recently approved by Narendra Modi’s cabinet, Prasad stated that the programme has been commenced considering the country’s low broadband penetration and the fact that the government wants to build a digital infrastructure that becomes a basic utility to everybody in the country.

“We wish to reach every gram panchayat of India within a defined period upon government costs and the government user network is here to ensure connectivity. We can have couple of Alibaba in coming future if we are able to rollout this programme very well,” said Prasad. It should noted that the rural telecom penetration is a meager 44%.

Emphasizing on the importance of digital infrastructure, Union Minister Prasad noted the high cost of manufacturing in the country has forced entrepreneurs to import goods. “India is importing electronic goods worth $100 billion every year which is likely to cross over to $400 billion by 2020 and the import bill will surpass the fuel import bill,” he added.

At present, the government plans to launch electronic manufacturing clusters that will provide infrastructure to attract in investments in Electronics Systems Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) sector. The first cluster will be launched in Madhya Pradesh early next month, while more such clusters will be set up in other states such as Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Maharashtra among others.

“Therefore, from eCommerce to electronic manufacturing to digital connectivity is going to be a game changer of the country,” averred Prasad.
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