Digital economy to contribute over 20% of India's GDP by 2026: Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Thursday forecast that the digital economy will contribute more than 20 per cent of the country's GDP in 2026.

Addressing the 'G20 Digital Innovation Alliance Summit' here, he said India is a preeminent nation that adopted technology very fast and has started offering solutions to the world.

"The digital economy has gone from 4-4.5 per cent in 2014 of the total GDP to 11 per cent of the total GDP today. And we expect the digital economy to contribute over 20 per cent of our GDP by 2026," Chandrasekhar said.

According to him, India adopted technology not just for innovation in a broader sense, but to deliver real solutions that have transformed people's lives, governance and democracy in the last few years.

"This pace of digitalisation means we are now looking at every citizen, every consumer consuming digital products or services, whether it is Instagram reels or Digital Public Infrastructure that connect them to the government and governance, or using the cloud and all of the upstream and downstream impacts that are created by this space and trend of digitalisation," the minister said.

Chandrasekhar said "the centre of gravity of tech", which used to be in a few countries and centred around a few corporations and a few companies is moving to open source systems to younger and younger startups that are disrupting the normal.

These trends, according to him, are in turn capitalising on the broader trend of increased digitisation.

Hailing Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his vision of maximum usage of digital technology, the Minister said he had called the coming decade as a 'Techade', a decade of technology opportunities.

"In a lot of ways our Prime Minister exhorted young Indians that 'the India Techade' will be built by, architected by, designed by, innovated by determination, energy, creativity of young startups around the country and around the world," Chandrasekhar said.