India’s digitisation could add US$1 trillion to economy, McKinsey’s Anu Madgavkar tells Asia House

Increasing digitisation in India could add US$1 trillion of value to the economy by 2025, according to Anu Madgavkar, Partner at McKinsey Global Institute.

Speaking at Asia House’s Digital India conference, held in partnership with McKinsey & Company, Madgavkar gave a compelling overview of digitisation in the country, highlighting the speed with which new technologies are being adopted.

“In terms of acceleration, momentum and rate of growth, India is among the fastest [adopters],” Madgavkar said. “It is even outstripping some of its emerging market counterparts in terms of the speed of digital access.”

McKinsey Global Institute’s Digital India report, which Madgavkar unpacked during a presentation at the conference, shows that among 17 major digital economies, India is the second-fastest adopter of digitisation. Only Indonesia is digitising faster.

With more than 350 million mobile phone users in India, with average users spending 15 to 20 hours a week on social media and using 8.3 GB of data per month, the foundations for a major development of India’s digital economy are clear to see.

But there are challenges.

“Technology fundamentally transforms work,” Madgavkar said, “so there is a 40 to 45 million worker effect – people who will need retraining or redeployment.” There are also challenges in the private sector, as the gap between “digital leaders and digital laggards” is “quite stark.”

However, while these challenges are “not trivial”, neither are the opportunities, Madgavkar added.

“The prize is huge.”

Read the McKinsey Global Institute’s report, Digital India: Technology to transform a connected nation.

Watch Anu Madgavkar’s presentation in full