DIGITAL INDIA CANNOT HAPPEN WITHOUT TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION: DEBJANI GHOSH

As the Digital India gathers pace, Intel, the world’s leading processor company is playing a key role in encouraging innovation and making computing accessible to the masses in the country. We caught up with Intel’s Debjani Ghosh, vice president, sales and marketing group, managing director, South Asia to find out more about the initiative and Intel’s role in it.

Let us start off with your thoughts on Digital India, of which there is so much talk these days.

To me, it is very basic fundamental core development strategy that India has to adopt. It is boring but often it is the boring things that are so crucial. So it is a very boring, but fundamental strategy that India has to deploy if it has to be successful. Success, if I have to define success, is basic education for all – it is important if you want to include every citizen in that valuable process. As much as we want, we cannot build schools in every village. Even if we do, we will not be able to send teachers to every village, and that is where technology becomes very crucial in India’s development. This is the reason India has to be digitized, so that you can bridge that last mile gap and are able to include every single citizen in your development process. So to me it is so fundamental, that as we need air and water to grow, India needs that in order to grow to the next stage. It is something that has to be turned into a national growth agenda.

That is right, but a question lots of people ask me is why is Intel getting involved in this?

Because if digital India is even half successful, technology adoption will go up significantly, because digital India cannot happen without technology adoption. We don’t sell anything in this country. Our target is a more difficult one – to grow the overall technology adoption. Because if that grows, all our consumption grows, all our market grows, everything grows.

What has been the response to the Innovate for Digital India Challenge, an initiative with which Intel has been closely associated?

The response has been pretty fantastic actually, both as the consumer and citizen participation as well as the government and industry participation. We have leaders across the country whether it is Amar Babu of Lenovo, Aruna Jayanthi of Cap Gemini, Vikas Jain of Micromax… everyone has come up and said we will come and help. The uptake was fantastic we got around 1900 plus complete apps – we had hoped for 1000. This was not an idea generation issue but this was an idea with right level of technology. We recently announced a fun challenge on service security and we aimed at kids 6-12 and we had like 5 lakh kids who took the challenge in a week. It is amazing and was very basic and just teaches them how to stay safe and it encourages them to be champions.

You have been working in close association with the Government on a number of projects. There is a belief that working with the Government is not easy. What has your experience been?

Before I came to India I had heard that you cannot work with the Government here. But I am happy to say that everyone has been proved wrong on that. I have actually found them very receptive and they have done much more than we have asked or even what we have expected.

We have seen a lot of Intel processors in the low end devices. We saw it in the Micromax Laptab which is a touch and type device and for Rs. 15000. Is this also under the same empowerment strategy to make the devices more affordable?

Yes, it is the part of the overall strategy as we need products that are relevant for this market. And if you are going with the complete first time buyer and the first time user, their usage model is going to be very basic. And also the value for money also becomes very important. I will also say that our strategy is not defined by bringing down the cost. The Indian strategy is defined by the identified partners especially local partners like the Micromax, iBall and Flipkart, who have their fingers on the market pulse, and who will know how to use our technology and to come out with products at right price which are relevant for the market. So my strategy is more of identifying the partnered strategy of the market and then let them do what they want to do with our products.

What can expect next from Intel and Digital India?

We expect to make Digital India reality soon. We will stay true to our four pillars we have identified- Digital literacy innovation, security and standards and the basics. We will continue to work with the government to scale those and when the time is also right, will start building the partnered ecosystem so that we can deliver two-end solutions to Digital India. At state level we have spent a lot of time talking to state governments, they can’t just think about laptops and tablets but the starting point for them is citizen security so they have to think about a device to take to the data center with security. We are in a position that we can pull all this together from devices to data center with analytics, with the security, and we have few people who can actually do that. And that is what we take it as a matter of both pride and a huge responsibility.

Source : Tech-gig news