India was in a position to move at a rate much faster than any other country, he said

The government will soon roll out a five-year strategic perspective plan to make India a major tech player, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Tuesday.

The plan would outline the steps needed to achieve this objective, he said.

Chandrasekhar was speaking at the inaugural session of the International Conference and Exhibition on Digital technologies - “Future Tech 2021” organized by the CII.

The event revolves on Strategy, Growth, Resilience, Inclusiveness and Trust with a focused theme “Driving technologies for building the future, we all can trust”.

"Soon we are going to roll out a 5 year strategic perspective plan, detailing the competency and capabilities that needs to be developed for realizing these ambitions," the minister said.

Chandrasekhar quoted from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Independence Day speech this year and said, "This is the time to highlight the opportunities that the technology sector offers to Indian companies, start-ups and entrepreneurs".

Chandrasekhar remarked that India was in a position to leapfrog and move at a rate much faster than any other country.

He attributed this to factors like the rapid digitalization of the world, the shift in the semi conductor space from hardware driven performance towards design in innovation for the next generation of computing & communication performance and India’s deep technology competency both in public and private sector.

The Minister also spoke about the impact of the COVID pandemic on the digital economy.

“In the last 6 years we have made tremendous strides in digitizing our economy and public services within the economy. It has helped India prove to be resilient during the COVID Pandemic," he pointed out.

India had created Unicorns at the rate of 2 a month, attracted 65 billion dollar investment in the tech space and grown the overall ambition during this period, he noted.

"The post l-COVID era offers new set of opportunities. There has never been a more exciting time for those in technology than today. This is the time to reset our ambitions and re-imagine the future in very different ways from the pre-COVID era," he said.