India at cusp of becoming premier digital society; to be among 3 top world economies: Ambani

With mobile networks better or at par with anywhere else in the world, India has an opportunity to become a 'premier digital society', billionaire Mukesh Ambani said on Monday as he saw the country becoming the third world's largest economy within the next decade.

Speaking at a fireside chat with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, he said the big change driving this transformation was the deepening of mobile networks which were working at a much faster pace than before.

"I can easily say that the mobile networks in India now are better or at par with anywhere else in the world," he said. "The opportunity that we have for India, really, is the opportunity to become the premier digital society in the world."
"I have no doubt in my mind that we will become among the top three economies in the world," he said. "We can argue about whether it will happen in 5 years or 10 years but it's going to happen, and we will be in the top three economies in the world."
When Nadella joined Microsoft in 1992, the Indian economy was USD 300 billion. "Today, India is USD 3 trillion," said Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Industries. "And fundamentally, this whole progress, in a certain way, has happened on the back of technology."
In the early days, it was Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys which drove technology which kick-started the financial and economic reforms, he said. "It was supercharged in 2014 when Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) gave us the vision of Digital India."
"We just introduced UPI and did digitisation in December. We had 100 per cent growth and total UPI transactions in this country were Rs 2 lakh crore," he said. "We are accelerating and we are just at the beginning of this whole journey."
"We in India have the opportunity to become the premier digital society," he stated. "The next generation will see a very different India than what you (Nadella) and I have grown up in."
Referring to Donald Trump's visit, he said the US President will see "in 2020 a very different from the India that neither President Carter saw nor (President) Bill Clinton saw or even Barak Obama."
"I think that the entrepreneurial power that we have at the grassroots is enormous."