Data, AI can add $450-500 bn to India’s GDP by 2025: Nasscom

Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) could potentially add $450-500 billion to India’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 2025 and drive India’s economic growth, said a report by industry body Nasscom.

Nearly 45% of this value is likely to be delivered by three sectors: consumer goods and retail, agriculture and banking, and insurance.

The report ‘Unlocking Value from Data and AI’ lays down an action plan that can help the country emerge stronger from the covid-19 crisis by taking co-ordinated action to enhance data and AI capabilities across key sectors such as agriculture, tourism, energy, logistics and accounting and financial services.

The report claims that driving utilization of data and AI could play a crucial role in contributing to effective covid-19 response and economic recovery, supporting India’s social initiatives and equitable growth and enhancing talent and capabilities to position India as the global hub for data and AI services.

“Data and AI’s true potential emerges from its ability to drive transformation across multiple sectors through a diverse range of applications. The report articulates the key structural steps that India needs to take to realise the value of this opportunity,” said Debjani Ghosh, resident, Nasscom.

The action plan focuses on building a coordinated program across five building blocks of strategy, data, technology stack, talent and execution, to capture the opportunity.

The report also highlights the importance of building an AI innovation ecosystem and to seek greater participation from the private sector and entrepreneurs.

“The adoption of data and AI is increasingly becoming a differentiator for business success. AI today is driving large scale digital innovation and transforming every industry critical to economic growth. India has the potential to become a global hub for data and AI. The moment is now, to support and grow a vibrant AI ecosystem in India,” said Anant Maheshwari, president, Microsoft India.

The report suggests several key actions to catalyze data utilization and adoption of AI in India. This includes creating a central, apex body to steer its execution, in collaboration with various ministries, industry groups and other stakeholders, identifying datasets of national importance with each ministry with specific use cases and creating schemes to engage the AI ecosystem including industry, startups, civil society, and academia. Although India has 1600 deep-tech startups, with the deep tech startup pool growing at 40% CAGR from 2014, the pace of AI innovation is lagging, so an ecosystem of innovation involving industry bodies, startups and academia could be crucial to accelerate data and AI efforts, the report said.

“AI has become a strategic lever for economic growth across nations and will continue to be one of the most crucial technologies of the future.. In order to harness its full potential, India needs to embrace AI innovation and regulation with an open, inclusive, principal-based and a collaborative mindset,” said Ravi Shankar Prasad, minister of law & justice, communications, electronics and IT at the report launch. Live Mint