India must be known as “Digitally Talented Nation” like Israel known for startup eco-system: Ajay Sawhney, IT Secretary, GoI  

Hyderabad: We want India to be characterised as Digitally Talented Nation similarly to how Israel is known for startup said Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Govt of India while participating in a panel discussion on “Ahead in the Cloud” moderated by Sridhar Pinnapureddy, Founder and CEO of CtrlS & Cloud4C and TiE Global Summit Chair on Wednesday evening.
 
It is for the first time such an eminent panel has come together ever in the cloud industry to discuss the most sought-after subject of cloud technology announced Sridhar.
 
Imagine Pandemic without the cloud? Have we been able to run offices as normal as pre-COVID without the Cloud? Imagine if the same Cloud has strict the world what would have happened? Had it not been for cloud all the business would have come to a grinding halt and there wouldn’t have been WFH (Work From Home), Digital Workplaces would not have been a reality today.  We are almost back to normal though Pandemic is still on, except for personal freedom. All this was possible because of the Cloud technology, Sridhar gave his opening remarks.
 
Speaking further he said 81% of the organisation already adopted Cloud. Another important thing about it is that it the public cloud industry will create 2.4 million jobs by the year 2023 and these jobs also impact another 7.34 million jobs between now till the year 2023.
 
Starting the panel discussion Ajay Sawhney said, it was always the cloud-first policy of the government of India. He reminded the panel about Meghraj Cloud Initiative, started long ago in order to utilise and harness the benefits of Cloud Computing. The Government of India has embarked upon this an ambitious initiative. The focus of it was to accelerate the delivery of e-services in the country while optimizing ICT spending of the Government. We have listed out 13 companies in the first round itself, he said and added that lockdown was implemented stringently in India. Because of the cloud, all the Senior Bureaucrats of the Government of India could work from home overnight.
 
Even in the case of private 97 per cent worked from home and only 3% applied for e-passes to ensure the safety of their cloud infrastructure and keep it running.
 
Anant Maheshwari, MD of Microsoft said 80% of large companies have migrated to cloud. But, on the whole, if you see Indian scenario only 10% penetration has happened. We need to build capabilities and create massive moments.
 
COVID has accelerated the migration. We need to ensure trust, inclusion and sustainability if we have to move further he said.
 
And replying to the request of Ajay asking them to add zeros to their investments in infrastructure creation in the country, Ananth said the teal zeros need to put for talent building and to create cloud skills in the country.
 
Zeros need to be added to 70 million small businesses who have the potential to move cloud but have not done yet.  On adding zeros to investments he said India is our focus area. It is a priority cloud provider.
 
Karan Bajwa of Google India said Pandemic was a diving moment in many fronts. It changed how people used to perceive the cloud before. Today people have woken up to the power of cloud the said.
 
Every crisis is an opportunity to do better and all the Panelists saw good opportunities for the cloud in future.
 
Quoting NASSCOM study Ananth said Data and AI are big drivers of the economy in India, May contribute $ 450 to 500 billion to its GDP by the year 2025.
 
Ajay said, the Aarogya Sethu app was built in 20 days and reached 150million downloads just in 4 months ten days only because of the cloud. There is no dearth of talent in India. There are 10,000 teams like the one built Aarogya Sethu in our country he said.
 
Sridhar announced CtrlS’s ambitious expansion plans. Replying to the request of Ajay asking him to look at adding zeros in terms of investments, Sridhar said, the company would be building capacities, expanding to tier-2 cities. We hope to be number one in next two years with these expansion plans which include expanding Data Center Foot Print, setting up of 300 Mega Watt campus in Mumbai, another one with equal capacity in Hyderabad. The plans are on the anvil to foray into Edge Computing and Hybrid Cloud Services he informed.