Amazon India head’s 5 ideas to take India’s digital economy to $1 trillion

• Amazon India Country Manager Amit Agarwal laid down five areas that India should focus on to be a trillion dollar digital economy.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for focussed effort to turn India into a $5 trillion economy.
• A major push for the $5 trillion economy will come from India’s digital businesses.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for focussed effort to turn India into a $5 trillion economy and it has become a topic of debate. A slowing economy has made the country only question it further.

A major push for the $5 trillion economy will come from India’s digital businesses. Though the Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal recently snubbed Amazon saying India doesn’t need its FDI to be a $5 trillion economy, Amazon is still bullish.

At the 14th India Digital Summit organised by Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), Amazon India Country Manager Amit Agarwal laid down five areas that India should focus on to be a trillion dollar digital economy.

“It should be thought about – is it a forgone conclusion that we will get to being a trillion dollar digital economy. Sometimes you can confuse the luck that we have right now to be an entitlement and take it for granted and say that .. yeah in 5 years we can be a trillion dollar digital economy. I think there's a lot of work between here and there,” said Agarwal.

Here are the five areas that we need to consciously focus on, as suggested by Agarwal.

Skill
We are blessed to have a young population like no one else in the world. If we really want to leverage the collective wisdom, digital literacy is important. There needs to be a collective effort by companies and governments and programmes. We need more focus on science, engineering and machine learning as a part of fundamental education so that the next generation can be prepared. This is an area of priority.

Grassroot Entrepreneurship

It's very fortunate to see the startup ecosystem grow so quickly and get to the point where it is today. But there is a whole segment out there that is ripe and ready to blossom. It’s probably the most entrepreneurial segment out there – the 10 million plus micro and small medium businesses. From kirana stores to delivery points, the amazing adaptiveness of this group is just mind boggling. If we can empower them with the right kind of tools and services, so that they can scale it will be great. There’s a lot more that can be done by just removing friction.

Women in the skillforce

The third is basically a combination of just math and being right. It's very interesting to see that if you simulate women participation in the Indian workforce that stands at 27% and just bring it to the global average of 48%, we add $700 million to our economy. It’s a straight recipe for adding almost a trillion dollars. It’s not just good math but also being right – having equal perspective will help us build better products, serve customers better as a country, society and an organisation.

Artificial Intelligence

AI is one of the areas that is under misconception where people feel it might take over, might channel conflicts about labour in India. But if you really think about it, AI-backed solutions for automation at scale can simply improve productivity, give better outcomes and result in job creation. This, especially in a country like India where scale and diversity is massive. My team has been working with the government on how to use AI to improve the grading of farm produce.

Policy framework

Fifth aspect is a policy framework that is enabling and stable. These kinds of large scale transformations need capital and you need to have that stability to impact long range investments and bets that can feel safe of not being churned around. It’s important to build partnership between industry and policymakers that is based on trust, tries to drive minimum governance, that worries about privacy but not at the expense of innovation.

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