Budget 2023 reactions: AI, 5G and the year of digital public infrastructure

The Union Budget 2023-24 presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman lays special emphasis on the growth of Digital India and has several measures announced to strengthen the growth and usage of Artificial Intelligence in the country as well as train the youth to develop digital skills.

Chetan Asher, Co-founder & CEO, Tonic Worldwide:

“The focus on digital infrastructure is significant and is designed to keep the momentum going in the growth of our digital economy. Continued support for start-ups was much needed. Digital Library is a great initiative and an important step in boosting literacy.”

Sahil Chopra, Founder & CEO- iCubesWire:

“The 2023 Budget looks promising for the digital and technology sector. Emerging technologies such as 5G, Web 3.0, and Metaverse will give rise to new business opportunities. Moreover, implementing a comprehensive legal framework will strengthen personal data protection. Investments in tech innovation and digital asset creation will facilitate the development of a knowledge-based economy, with leading educational institutes taking the lead. With the development of three Centres of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence in its top academic institutions, we will move closer to making AI in India a reality.”

Nikhil Kurhe, Co-founder & CEO, Finarkein Analytics:

“The first five minutes of the Budget mentioned Digital Public Infrastructure like Aadhar, UPI, and CoWIN. I think that set the tone perfectly for what to expect from the Finance Minister for the next 90 minutes, and the Budget has definitely delivered on all the right fronts.

The focus remained on a people-centric world order combined with sustainable development. To facilitate ample opportunities for citizens to fulfill their aspiration, a strong impetus to growth and job creation was a core focus of the Budget. Additionally, the government’s fiscal discipline and sticking to deficit targets is commendable and puts India on a path of strong macroeconomic stability. While the reaction to the last 15 minutes and changes to the personal tax under the new regime were palpable and expected, I strongly believe that there were a few foundational pieces that have been set in motion in this Budget, which will have a multiplier effect in the coming years.

The first big winning theme on the DPI front I believe has been DigiLocker. DigiLocker has had a slow start over the years, but has rapidly been activated with strong core utility and anchor use cases. DigiLocker + Aadhar is a robust identity and document layer and will pay a key role in facilitating risk based KYC. PAN as a common identifier for businesses will again be a central focal point, although I’m a little disappointed that Udyog Aadhar wasn’t promoted as highly in tandem with PAN. The scope and depth of documentation that will be available through DigiLocker is expanding and I expect usage and uptick will naturally follow. A one-stop solution/ centralised IT system was another recurring theme around KYC with a single window for identity and address updates will also be built on existing identity DPIs.

The second core theme which I feel has a lot of scope and can move the needle significantly for the Indian economy is the Agristack. A Digital Public Infrastructure focused on the agriculture domain that will be open source, based on interoperable open standards will be a game changer. As more data is made available for relevant decisioning, ancillary services which can drive growth and revenues for agriculture will flow seamlessly. I expect new credit and insurance products around agriculture to be built exclusively around the Agristack in the coming year. Furthermore, the budget mentioned a fund for agritech start-ups and initiatives, which is yet another impetus for this sector to pick up and set us on a multi-year path.

Lastly, the third core highlight which I believe will fly under the radar is the National Data Governance Policy. This is absolutely massive. Cutting edge Artificial Intelligence that we see today like ChatGPT, Google’s LAMBDA and other AI models are largely following similar architecture. Difference in their experience and utility is a function of the datasets they are trained on like Wikipedia edit history, social media, and other publicly available datasets are used to train these Large Language Models. India with our Open Finance (Account Aggregator) and Open Health (Ayushmann Bharat Digital Health Mission) initiatives will be uniquely positioned with datasets having such wide breadth and depth in the quantity and quality of data available in finance and health domain. Combined with the right policies, anonymised and de-identified datasets can be made available to researchers, think tanks, and other relevant entities to build cutting edge AI in these domains. In a year or two the AgriStack will provide a steady stream of data to build novel AgriAI models as well. Having a robust National Data Governance policy will be key to ensure there’s no compromise on privacy and security of data principles though. Additionally, the value that will be created from this policy will naturally accrue to the nation and have far reaching implications beyond Indian borders as well.

I would say the budget was very foundational in nature with benefits and initiatives that will continue to deliver dividends not only for the coming fiscal, but beyond as well.”

Sridhar Seshadri, CEO, Spotflock Technologies:

“The Government has outlined a focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI) led skill-development by announcing the establishment of three centres of Artificial Intelligence. The growth of new-age technologies like AI and machine learning (ML) is a great opportunity for India, given its large labour pool, which can be upskilled and reskilled. After ‘Make in India’, we firmly support the government's initiative to “Make AI in India, for India” and turn India into a major global digital force.

Further focus on actively implementing AI in healthcare, agriculture and sustainable cities would open up lots of opportunities for Spotflock.”