Every Indian will own a smartphone in the next 5 years: Amitabh Kant

With smartphone penetration increasing day by day and people shifting from feature phone to smarter handsets due to low cost, Niti Aayog Chief Executive Amitabh Kant has now stated that every Indian will have a smartphone in the next five years. Speaking at the India Digital Summit organized by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), Kant said there were nearly 400 million smartphone users in the country.

Indians are using more data on mobile and mobile is changing consumer behavior, according to him. "India ranks first in terms of most monthly Internet users in terms of Facebook, Whatsapp, and Twitter," Kant said, adding that Jio's acquisition of 170 million customers in merely four months was commendable.

He said this was a period of huge technology disruption in the country. "Today, 85 percent of the devices are still unconnected. Therefore, there is a huge opportunity for the Internet of Things (IoT) space. The opportunity would be in the range of $70 billion by 2025," he said.

According to him, Artificial Intelligence (AI) alone will generate an opportunity to the tune of $32 billion. "Advanced robotics is already handling 25 percent of the jobs. This will rise to 45 percent in the coming years. "India is already ranked globally as the most active Internet user globally on a monthly basis. Digital transaction will touch $100 trillion in the next 10 years," he told the gathering.

With 99 percent Aadhaar penetration and bank account opened under Jan Dhan Yojana, he said, the scope was immense for the Fin-Tech industry. "As far as the start-up community goes, 'Make in India' initiative has brought in a paradigm change in the financial ecosystem." He further said that the government's current focus is on the cashless transfer of money, and there would be a huge opportunity for financial technology or fintech products that can also lower transactional costs.

While we have 4,000 start-ups, it will go up to 12,000 by 2020," Kant said, adding that about 600 start-ups were there in the FinTech sector which will become a $14 billion opportunity by 2020. The challenges today for the country were to provide safe drinking water, create infrastructure and build flyovers. All these give unicorns a unique opportunity to invest and explore, Kant said.