iSPIRT works to transform India into a hub for new generation software products, by addressing crucial government policy, creating market catalysts and grow the maturity of product entrepreneurs. Welcome to the Official Insights!
This being an interim budget, much was not expected as far as new announcements and taxation changes. However, for iSPIRT and the Product ecosystem of the country, it is heartening to know that some of our initiatives and thoughts as a ‘think-tank’ have become central to thinking of Government at the leadership level. The following are important to note
The Finance Minister mentioned that “DPI (digital public infrastructure), a new factor of production in the 21st century, is instrumental in the formalization of the economy”. She also mentioned the G-20 successes. ISPIRT pioneered the concept of DPI and played a vital role in rolling out many DPIs and covering the DPI advocacy as a knowledge partner to the Digital Economy Working Group.
The second announcement that can hugely impact product nation-building is the funding of Research. FM announced that, “A corpus of rupees one lakh crore will be established with a fifty-year interest-free loan. The corpus will provide long-term financing or refinancing with long tenors and low or nil interest rates. This will encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation significantly in sunrise domains.” Also, the thought of generating employment and empowering youth was central to this announcement. We hope that post-election a robust mechanism can be developed to implement this and capitalize on nation-building. This announcement is also important from iSPIRT’s thought process where a continuous push under its “Vishwamitra” initiative is being out on funding R&D in multiple ways at scale.
Also notable is, a new scheme for deep-tech technologies for defence aiming at expediting ‘Aatma-nirbharta’ is on the anvil.
Although nothing new has been announced, Start-ups are central to the Government’s thinking for economic development.
Overall it is a futuristic thinking budget speech with an emphasis on deep-tech, research funding, Capital inflows and startups along with capex and infrastructure.
Though there was a mention of ‘Reform, Perform, and Transform’ as a guiding principle, the budget did not touch upon any specific reform or intent on Ease of Doing business. We wish this becomes an important agenda item along with funding research for our businesses to succeed in global competition.
This is the 4th blog in a series of blogs describing and signifying the importance of DPI for AI, a privacy-preserving techno-legal framework for AI data collaboration. Readers are encouraged to first go over the earlier blogs for better understanding and continuity.
We are at the cusp of history with regard to how AI advancements are unfolding and the potential to build a man-machine society of the future economically, socially, and politically. There is a great opportunity to understand and deliver on potentially breakthrough business and societal use cases while developing and advancing foundational capabilities that can adapt to new ideas and challenges in the future. The major startups in Silicon Valley and big techs are focused first on bringing the advancements of AI to first-world problems – optimized and trained for their contexts. However, we know that first world’s solutions may not work in diverse and unstructured contexts in the rest of the world – may not even for all sections of the developed world.
Let’s address the elephant in the room – what are the critical ingredients that an AI ecosystem needs to succeed – Data, enabling regulatory framework, talent, computing, capital, and a large market. In this open house
we make a case that India is the place that excels in all these dimensions, making it literally a no-brainer whether you are an investor, a researcher, an AI startup, or a product company to come and do it in India for your own success.
India has one of the most vibrant, diverse, and eager markets in the world, making it a treasure chest of diverse data at scale, which is vital for AI models. While much of this data happens to be proprietary, the DPI for AI data collaboration framework makes it available in an easy and privacy-preserving way to innovators in India. Literally, no other country has such a scale and game plan for training data. One may ask that diversity and scale are indeed India’s strengths but where is the data? Isn’t most of our data with the US-based platforms? In this context, there are three types of Data:
a. Public Data, b. Non-Personal Data (NPD), and c. Proprietary Datasets.
Let’s look at health. India has far more proprietary datasets than the US. It is just frozen in the current setup. Unfreezing this will give us a play in AI. This is exactly what DPI for AI is doing – in a privacy-preserving manner. In the US, health data platforms like those of Apple and Google are entering into agreements with big hospital chains – to supplement their user health data that comes from wearables. How do we better that? This is the US Big Tech-oriented approach – not exactly an ecosystem approach. Democratic unfreezing of health data with hospitals is the key today. DPI for AI would do that even for all – small or big, developers or researchers! We have continental-scale data with more diversity than any other nation. We need a unique way to unlock them to enable the entire ecosystem, not just big corporations. If we can do that, and we think we can via DPI for AI, we will have AI winners from India.
Combine this with India’s forward looking regulatory thought process that balances Regulation for AI and Regulation of AI in a unique way that encourages innovation without compromising on individual privacy and other potential harms of the technology. The diversity and scale of the Indian market act like a forcing function for innovators to think of robustness, safety, and efficiency from the very start which is critical for the innovations in AI to actually result in financial and societal benefits at scale. There are more engineers and scientists of Indian origin who are both creating AI models or developing innovative applications around AI models. Given our demographic dividend, this is one of our strengths for decades to come. Capital and Compute are clearly not our strong points, but capital literally follows the opportunity. Given India’s position of strength on data, regulation, market, and talent, capital is finding its way to India!
So, what are you all waiting for? India welcomes you with continental scale data with a lightweight but safe regulatory regime and talent like no place else to come build, invest, and innovate in India. India has done it in the past in various sectors, and it is strongly positioned to do it again in AI. Let’s do this together. We are just getting started, and, as always, are very eager for your feedback, suggestions, and participation in this journey!
iSPIRT turned 10 in February this year. We are about rewriting the script of the nation. The past year indicates that some of this has happened with India Stack. The idea of Digital Public Infrastructure, aka DPI, is now part of the national lexicon. It has also become India’s calling card for the world.
Back in 2015, India Stack was a response to possible digital colonization. This risk has been contained.
We have made progress. It is something to be proud of.
But this doesn’t make us a Product Nation.
India has potential. We can be a France instead of Spain, a Korea instead of Thailand. France and Korea have products that the world needs. Spain and Thailand are countries where people work for foreigners.
So, iSPIRT is only halfway there in its mission. We need to remain focused on this unfinished mission. Our next ten years will make India’s true potential come to life.
Can we make it happen? Yes!
We are doubling down. This year will see more public technology from iSPIRT than ever before.
We seek volunteers who can think outside the box and contribute their unique perspectives for this unprecedented journey. Volunteering is very different from a job. Hence, having the right mindset and approach is essential.
To volunteer for iSPIRT, kindly fill the form located at the bottom of the volunteer page available at this link. Join us as we build on our decade-long journey and welcome the next chapter of iSPIRT’s story.
Budget 2023 – Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) the ‘Mantra’ for New India
iSPIRT Foundation, a technology think-and-do tank, believes that India’s hard problems can be solved only by leveraging public technology for private innovation. iSPIRT as a think tank pioneered the Digital Public infrastructure (DPIs)
India is at the cusp of what could be the most exciting quarter century of its post-independence existence, referred to as ‘Amrit Kaal’ by the Economic Survey yesterday and today in the Budget speech. The Economic Survey also mentioned that GDP could be boosted by 1% by Digital Public Infrastructure (DPIs), where India is stealing a March on the world for sure.
The second testimony to the important contribution of DPIs to the economy comes in the budget speech today when the finance minister stated, “India’s rising global profile is because of several accomplishments: unique world class digital public infrastructure, e.g., Aadhaar, Co-Win and UPI” in the forefront.
Development of DPIs, Stay-in-India Checklist (for Ease of Doing business of Startups), and a ‘jugalbandi’ between public technology and private innovation, through techno-legal regulations, are central to iSPIRT’s work in an attempt to build Product Nation.
The union budget 2023, brings in cheer to see attempts on the following:
Digital Public Infrastructure: The resolve to deepen the DPI and the belief in their role in economic growth. India Stack to build the DPIs has become central to the thought process. Taking the queue ahead the budget 2023 announced the development of DPI for Agriculture, which will be an open source, OpenAPI digital public good, to build inclusive farmer-centric solutions, credit & insurance, farm inputs market intelligence. An Agriculture Accelerator Fund has been announced to promote Agritech start-ups.
Vigyan Infrastructure: efforts to boost R&D, though limited to some sectors right now. Notable among these are – It encourages private sector R&D teams for encouraging collaborative research and innovation in select ICMR labs in the PPP model
One hundred labs for developing applications using 5G services will be set up in engineering institutions.
Center of Excellence for AI for “Make AI in India and Make AI work for India
MSMEs funding& growth is part of the budget thought process, which may lead to the use of another DPI called Open Credit Enablement Networks (OCEN) for enabling MSME funding.
The importance of Ease of doing business is reflected in some announcements like using PAN as a Common digital identifier and entity DigiLocker for MSMEs.
Wanting to keep the startup revolution going is reflected in the intent to use Startups to build technology in multiple sectors and also use the policy for a new India.
However, beneath all the euphoria, some chronic issues remained to be addressed. The disappointment is on the Stay-in-India checklist (a list of Ease of doing business issues for Startups) to stop startups from slipping from India, which has not been addressed. The checklist is being continuously pursued by iSPIRT and is much needed to provide a competitive edge for India to refrain startups from leaving her jurisdiction.
Overall it’s heartening to see the vision statement in budget, “Our vision for the Amrit Kaal includes technology-driven and knowledge-based economy”.
About iSPIRT Foundation – We are a non-profit think-and-do tank that builds public goods for Indian product startups to thrive and grow. iSPIRT aims to do for Indian startups what DARPA or Stanford did in Silicon Valley. iSPIRT builds four types of public goods – technology building blocks (aka India stack), startup-friendly policies, market access programs like M&A Connect and Playbooks that codify scarce tacit knowledge for product entrepreneurs of India.
