Amazon to invest $35 billion by 2030 in India: Sandeep Dutta
The AWS India and South Asia head said that India's success in AI depended on its ability to democratise technology, its ability to create and use AI for the good of the people.
The AWS India and South Asia head said that India's success in AI depended on its ability to democratise technology, its ability to create and use AI for the good of the people.
The AWS India and South Asia head said that India's success in AI depended on its ability to democratise technology, its ability to create and use AI for the good of the people.
Sandeep Dutta, President of Amazon Web Services, India and South Asia, on Friday said that Amazon would deepen its "purpose-led" involvement in India and invest 35 billion dollars from 'now to 2030'. The investment, which will link scale to purpose, will go mostly into skilling and education.
"This is in addition to the 40 billion dollars we have already spent to help digitise 12 billion small businesses and help create 20 million export-enabled businesses," Dutta said while delivering the keynote address titled 'Re-architecting the Future: How Cloud, AI & Intelligent Infrastructure Will Shape India 2030' at the 10th edition of Techspectations in Kochi.
"Our regions in Mumbai and Hyderabad are ready to propel the next level of digital transformation in India," Dutta said.
The AWS India and South Asia head said that India's success in AI depended on its ability to democratise technology, its ability to create and use AI for the good of the people. "The fundamental pillar that will underpin this success is the scope and expanse of digital public infrastructure," he said.
Aadhar, with nearly 1.4 billion digitalised identities, and UPI (United Payments Interface) were held up by Dutta as examples of digital public infrastructure that have used technology at scale to enhance the lives of people. "With Aadhar, we set a new global benchmark," Dutta said.
The UPI looks even more adventurous and ambitious. "Today, as a country, we manage 21 billion UPI transactions monthly. What's more important is that each one of them settles instantaneously," the AWS head said.
Dutta said that what exemplified India was its capability to take complex technology, use it to serve all sections of society and create impact at the grassroots level.
One example is Poshan Tracker, a mobile-based application of the Union Women and Child Ministry. "This (Poshan) is helping in the fight against undernutrition," Dutta said. He said that more than 1.4 million anganwadis in the country use this app to serve 90 million plus beneficiaries, 80 million of whom are children under the age of six.
"Poshan Tracker uses visual recognition for e-KYC and is able to create an unbroken chain, from policy to plate," he said. "The outcome: Every single rupee spent by the government will reach the right child, the right beneficiary," he added.
The same commitment to accountability extends to healthcare. Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY), the world's largest health insurance platform that serves 550 million users, was the example Dutta gave.
This is a platform that handles close to 1.2 million transactions involving millions of medical records a month. Dutta said that the AWS solutions were used in the platform to reduce the transaction processing time to just 30 minutes from days. "The PM-JAY has supported more than 100 million hospitalisations and medications worth close to 50 million dollars," Dutta said.
But getting to the citizens is just half the story. Creating impact for citizens is the greater part of the story, Dutta said.
Here, DigiLocker and Digi Yatra were Dutta's case examples. Dutta called DigiLocker "India's own digital wallet". "From the time DigiLocker was launched, it has served over 550 million users, and has stored over 9.4 billion records or documents. It's truly a platform that connects millions of issuers and requesters from banks to schools, and has been able to make online real-time document verification a reality," Dutta said.
As for Digi Yatra, he said it was one of the "most simplest use cases of visual recognition". It has transformed over 77 million customer journeys, he said and added: "Me and my family are part of that 77 million".
The power of technology in India is going to be skilling and education. "An AI-skilled tech-enabled workforce will be our USP," he said.
Dutta said AWS was committed to fulfilling India's skilling needs. "Since 2016, we have trained in excess of 6.2 million individuals in cloud and related skills," he said.
The AWS is working with educational institutions that skills students on ways to adapt the digital framework for good governance. Samarth eGov of Delhi University for instance.
The Samarth cloud-first platform offers more than 40 software modules. It has also helped integrate more than 14,000 higher education institutions and stores about 20 million records.
Dutta said all this scale should not be without purpose. It should be able to bring a smile to an underprivileged child or a poor farmer.