India Digital Summit: union communications minister will discuss digital policies, commerce and startups at the summit

• The 14th edition of India Digital Summit held in Delhi, will address topics related to policies, advertising and other industry related trends.
• Delegates from Amazon, PayTm and other industry leading firms will address the Summit

Union communications minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will deliver the inaugural address at the 14th India Digital Summit to be on February 5-6 at The Lalit in New Delhi.

The flagship event of IAMAI (Internet and Mobile Association of India) will raise topics like policies, advertising, digital commerce, start-up ecosystem, emerging tech, and other digital trends. Delegates across the ecosystem like cloud, e-commerce, travel, automobile and

“India is on the verge of taking the next digital leap, with over 451 million monthly active internet users and is in second place after China in terms of internet users,” IAMAI said. Top executives like Amit Agarwal of Amazon; Vijay Shekhar Sharma of PayTM; Sanjeev Bikhchandani of Info Edge will also be present at the summit.

As digitization and data collection have become common, industry players and the government alike have become increasingly aware of data privacy. Data breaches too are becoming more common, pushing the government to take cognisance of the need to regulate the industry.

Data localisation too is a much debated issue where the government wants to keep Indian data in local servers which is making life tough for MNCs. While this theory’s advocates argue that it will help implement data privacy laws more effectively while global firms feel data will be more vulnerable if it’s all in one place.

In the meanwhile the world of cybersecurity is changing rapidly. Threats continue to evolve at-par, if not faster than cyber intelligence can keep up. Old methods like trojans are still rampant with new threats like phishing attacks, webcam blackmail, and deep fakes ramping up. As all businesses go digital, some of these issues have been dragging them behind.

The two day summit will feature a series of leadership talks by Baijayant Panda, former member of parliament; Mohit Bhatnagar, managing director, Sequoia; Dhruv Shringi, co-founder & CEO, Yatra and vice-chairman, IAMAI.