Pre Budget Quotes from Industry Experts
INVC NEWS
New Delhi,
Technology
Mr. Ashwani Rawat & Mr. Amarsh Chaturvedi, Co-Founder & Director, Transerve “Innovation is an important driver in India’s business and economic growth and this was proven true during the pandemic crisis. India as a nation has great potential in the R&D space, especially owing to the large talent pool we have. Being a part of NASSCOM’s Deep-Tech Club we saw 10% rises in tech startups in 2020 alone with the addition of over 12 new unicorns. According to NASSCOM, the Indian deep tech industry led by AI is capable of adding USD 957 billion to the country’s GDP by 2035. We expect the Union Budget to increase its expenditure in the R&D sector, especially in the Location Intelligence industry to bore the benefits that the technology offers. We expect liberalizing the policies and framework to support the startup ecosystem.”
Mr. Sangeet Kumar, CEO & Co- Founder, Addverb “From the Union Budget 2021, we expect that the Government will ease the legal processes and regulations involved in setting up manufacturing facilities in India under its ‘Make in India’ initiative. As the future of manufacturing is driven by robotics and other automation technologies, I feel necessary steps need to be taken to encourage ingenious technology production as well as consumption in India. Measures such as an extension of PLI schemes for the Indian Industrial Robotics Manufacturers from suppliers’ front, and from buyers’ front, mandating automation adoption for PSU enterprises to enhance their performance indices. Overall incentivising adoption of industry 4.0 technologies adoption from across the sectors will enhance the manufacturing quantity as well as quality.
Increasing minimum wages is the need of the hour as during the Covid pandemic most of the labour left for their hometowns and to bring them back while providing them with a meaningful life, their wages should rise. According to a recent study, the total number of jobs related to developing and deploying new technologies, i.e. Automation, AI and robotics-related applications, may grow to 20 to 50 million globally by 2030 and more than 375 million workers globally will have to master fresh skills as their current jobs evolve alongside the rise of automation, robotics, AI, and the capable machines thereby enabled. Thus, the Government should come up with more upskilling programs to make the workforce ready to work with robots & other automation through industry partnerships.
Quote by Mr. Aloke Paskar, President & CEO, JK Technosoft Ltd. “As the economy gets back on track to recovery, we expect the upcoming Union Budget to propagate export-led growth and continue with export benefits. This will help add to India’s foreign exchange reserves. As part of the Union Budget 2021, we hope that the government comes out with possible solutions like bringing down the tariffs and putting our exchange rates and trade facilitation properly. Our Government has been extensively promoting ‘Make in India’, which is great to boost the domestic industry through domestic consumption, but we should be selling the “Make in India” good aggressively and to the external world, as strong foreign exchange reserves will give India the power to grow exponentially.”
Consumer Technology & Electronics
Quote by Mr. Mandeep Arora, Managing Director, UBON “The year 2020 was a year of challenges for nearly every sector, so, we are eagerly waiting for Budget 2021. Every sector is expecting the government to focus on overall economic growth and taking measures to continue positioning India as the business epicentre of the world. We expect new policies promoting R&D innovations by pushing relevant initiatives, making innovative and bold policy interventions to propel the process of Make-in-India across sectors. There’s no denying that Digital Innovation is an important building block for India’s future growth. Thus, nurturing new-age tech, improving the quality of talent, and enabling MSME must be on the agenda for the Government.”
Mr. Lalit Arora, Co-founder and CEO, VingaJoy “The consumer tech industry has great expectations from the Union Budget 2021-22. We hope that the upcoming budget has provisions that can strengthen progressive initiatives such as ‘Make in India’, ‘Digital India’, and the ‘Smart Cities Mission’. In the upcoming budget, we are hopeful that the government would continue the good work it began carrying out in its first term with regards to GST, Make in India, along with a host of initiatives it has undertaken in the consumer tech / FMCG sector. There has been an abolition of Chinese applications in India; this has led to a considerable slowdown in the import of Chinese products, so our industry is expecting improved funding and credit facility from the upcoming budget. Additionally, we are hopeful that the Government will continue to promote manufacturing in India through its ‘Make in India’ initiative as this would not only provide a boost to Indian companies but also aid in creating more employment opportunities.”
Education
Quote by Prof (Dr.) Sanjiv Marwah, Director, JK Business School “We anticipate that Union Budget 2021 will bring in revolutionary changes to the education sector. The New Education Policy (NEP-2020) brought aggressive changes in the Higher Education System of our country – provided flexibility in the learning curve, emphasized conceptual understanding, and blended learning. Similarly, the upcoming FY budget must promote the perfect amalgamation of digital and traditional education and strive to encourage the adoption of emerging technologies such as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Internet of Things as well as promoting Research & Development. Along with it, another key aspect that we are looking forward to in the Union Budget 2021 is financial support that can be provided to private sector institutions, including low-cost and zero-cost loans, which is done in many countries. We request the Govt. to consider ‘National Education Bank’ as a concept, just like the ‘National Housing Bank,’ such that education loans too can be provided at the lowest possible interest rate.”
MSME
Mr. Vinay Jain, Founder & CEO, Grafdoer (Sanitaryware manufacturer) “The Ministry of Finance will be presenting the budget on 1st February for the assessment year 2021-2022, and everyone including corporates, individuals, taxpayers and professionals have different expectations from the upcoming budget. Considering the slowdown in the economy and growth, MSMEs which form part of the backbone of the Indian value chain are expecting a big relief and reforms in the upcoming budget. We expect that the upcoming budget will take stringent actions to empower the MSME sector to revive the economy from the current slowdown. Apart from GST rationalization, we expect an extension of credit facilities from the upcoming budget, since the Government should focus on infusing liquidity into the markets and promoting ‘Make in India’.”
Quote by Mr. Kapil Bhatia, CEO, UniMask (Mask manufacturer) “MSME has always been the backbone of the Indian Economy with around 29 per cent share to India’s GDP. We expect the government to re-establish favourable policies and allocate substantial funds for the growth of MSMEs. 2020 was a blessing in disguise for MSME industry where the initial most of 2020 were quite brutal but the later half came to the rescue especially with the #boycottchinesegoods campaign and push towards Make-In-India. The MSME sector is hoping to get rid of challenges like lack of access to capital, infrastructure, skilled labour, and power supply issues that plague MSMEs in India. Therefore, Indian entrepreneurs hope that the Union Budget 2021 will provide some long-term benefits to the sector with better access to credit and lenient taxation policies.”
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