IT Minister Prasad urges Nadella to help boost DigiGaon initiative

Union IT and Electronics Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday met Indian-born CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella and urged him to consider the use of Microsoft's innovative technology in the upcoming DigiGaon (Digital Village) initiative.

"Had a good &productive meeting with @satyanadella. He deeply appreciated the success of ongoing #DigitalIndia program, which is transformative," the minister tweeted after talks with Nadella here.

"Requested @satyanadella to consider the use of their innovative technology in the proposed Digigaon (Digital Village) initiative," Prasad added.

In the Union Budget for the 2017-18 Fiscal, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced that a DigiGaon initiative will be launched for the provision of telemedicine, education and skills with the help of digital technology.

"It was fantastic to spend time with Minister Prasad, talking about the great progress India is making with IndiaStack and Digital India," Nadella said.

IndiaStack is a set of application programming interface (APIs) that allows governments, businesses, startups and developers to utilise an unique digital infrastructure to solve India's problems towards "presence-less, paperless, and cashless service delivery".

"For us at Microsoft, our mission is to empower every Indian and every Indian organisation to be able to achieve more and with the policies of the Government of India. We are excited to contribute to help take advantage of Digital India," Nadella said in a video posted by Prasad on his Twitter account.

On Wednesday, Nadella will address "Future Decoded" -- Microsoft's two-day flagship technology and business conference that started off in Mumbai on Tuesday.

The conference is a platform that brings together 1,500 business and government decision-makers to engage in conversations on how technology will transform all aspects of our work and life.

Earlier on Monday, leading e-commerce major Flipkart tied up with the global software major Microsoft to use its Azure Cloud platform for boosting its e-tail sales.

The strategic partnership was announced by Satya Nadella on his maiden visit to Bengaluru after he took over the reins of the world's largest software product firm in February 2014.

"At Microsoft, we aim to empower every Indian and every Indian organisation with technology through strategic partnerships with innovative firms like Flipkart," said Nadella on the occasion.

As a public cloud computing platform, Azure provides a range of services, including analytics, storage and networking on network of computers (cloud).

"By combining our public cloud platform and AI (Artificial Intelligence) capabilities with Flipkart's services and data assets, we will enable the e-tailor to accelerate its digital transformation and deliver new customer experiences," said Nadella.

--IANS

na/vm