India has potential to be magnet for digital innovation: Nasscom president Debjani Ghosh

India has the potential to become a magnet for digital innovation by focusing on areas like talent, policy framework and trust, Nasscom President Debjani Ghosh said on Thursday.

Speaking at the Women in Technology (WiT) India Forum, Ghosh said India will have to focus on building competencies in these three areas that will be critical in the "hyper digital economy".

The first one is digital talent, she said adding that India has an "absolute advantage" on that.

Ghosh noted that the right policy framework would also be important.

"It's not just leveraging the talent, it's about ensuring we have the right policy framework to take the risk, to try out new things, it's about ensuring ease of doing business. If we are innovating, how quickly can we safeguard our innovation, how easy is it to file a patent in India. A lot of these things will have to be looked at," she said.

The former Intel executive said the COVID-19 pandemic is driving reforms in an "exponential way" as incremental reforms are not going to work.

"India also has to really focus on trust because trust is going to be such an important pillar of a contactless digital economy. Everything you do will depend on whether you trust the person/company on the other side. I think Indian companies, especially our IT services companies, have done well on trust. How do we expand that to other segments," Ghosh said.

She said Nasscom and the government are working together to launch one of the largest-ever public-private partnerships on digital skilling.

"It will start somewhere towards the end of the year...and our goal is to train as many people as possible not just in IT but all other industries because every industry today is a digital industry," she added.

Another industry veteran Neelam Dhawan said that after the lockdown, infrastructure is not limited to roads, dams and highways, but includes IT infrastructure and cloud.