Mumbai: Communications Minister Jyotiraditya M. Scindia said on Thursday that 10 years ago, only six crore people in India had access to broadband and today that number tops 102 crore while data costs have fallen from Rs 287/GB to Rs 9/GB, making the country “the cheapest data capital of the world today”.
Addressing the Global Fintech Fest, Scindia said: “We started putting the 5G network in place in 2022, and over the next 26 months we have 5G network capability across 99.9 per cent of districts of India, covering 85 per cent of our population with a capex cost of Rs 4,500 crore.”
“As we connect each of India’s villages, they become a member of this global Fintech Fest,” he remarked.
Highlighting the breadth of the country’s digital infrastructure, Scindia said that Aadhaar has over 144 crore identities, while the number of Jan Dhan accounts had soared to 60 crore. Besides, affordable smartphones and DigiLocker, which houses 9 billion documents, have reduced the distance between citizens and their ability to use finance, he added.
Scindia underscored that 84 per cent of digital transactions now take place on UPI and 49 per cent of the world’s digital transactions take place in India.
“This technology has gone to 9 countries, and we look at taking it to the next 20 countries,” he said.
“A strong lesson for the globe is to learn from the success of this model: Innovation scales when infrastructure is open, inclusion scales when infrastructure is affordable, and trust scales when infrastructure is secure,” Scindia said.
The minister further stated that India is now the second-largest market for telecom with 133 crore mobile phones, of which almost 52 crore belong to the rural sector.
“These statistics portray a case of economic mobility,” he remarked.
Addressing the event, RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra said that India’s fintech ecosystem “ranks large globally”, having attracted funding of $2.4 billion.
“India has the opportunity of becoming a trusted partner in shaping the architecture of global finance. RBI is committed to supporting the industry in building a connected global system,” he added.
(IANS)
