Market Update: Digital highway fuelling India’s business and economic growth, says Jyotiraditya Scindia – Full Analysis

Scindia said the digital connectivity stack of India is not just a service but serves as the foundational infrastructure for the modern economy, comparable to physical transport systems during the industrial revolution.

He was speaking at the ET Now Global Business Summit on Saturday.

Scindia said 10 years ago, India had close to about 60 million broadband subscribers. Today, India has over one billion broadband subscribers.

A critical enabler of this digital transformation has been the massive reduction in the cost of data, making it accessible to the entire population. Scindia said 12 years ago, the cost of 1 GB of data was approximately ₹287. Today, that cost has plummeted to roughly ₹9 per GB.

“The average global cost of data is about $2.49, and we are at about 11 cents. So there has been a complete transformation, and that transformation has powered commerce, it has powered the economy,” he said.

Breaking Monopoly of Foreign Companies

Consequently, the commerce economy — which was previously being driven almost exclusively by tier-1 and tier-2 cities — is now allowing every citizen, from a farmer in Tripura to a coffee grower in Nagaland, to connect to the invisible highway and transact their production directly with international markets. This digital transformation has also enabled India to move beyond just participating in the digital economy to dominating global digital transaction volumes through platforms like Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC). “UPI today is doing close to about 20 billion transactions a month, 250 billion transactions a year, $4.3 trillion, 50% of the world’s digital transactions today take place in India,” Scindia said.
The minister added that during the G20 ministers meeting in 2023, digital capability was identified as a key pillar of sustainable development goals, with India recognised as the leader in this pillar globally.“The target for us is to be able to increase this capability, which is why you’re seeing probably the world’s largest public expenditure on grassroot connectivity happening in India,” Scindia said.

The amended Bharatnet Project is going to take optic fibre cable and broadband connectivity to 256,000 gram panchayats, 380,000 villages, with an investment of around ₹1.39 lakh crore, he said.

The minister said India has strategically shifted from importing telecom equipment to developing a homegrown technology stack, breaking the monopoly of foreign manufacturers. This made-in-India technology stack is powering state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited’s (BSNL) 4G rollout.

“Our state-owned telco, BSNL, had two paths before itself. One was to emulate the other telcos and buy equipment from the big five, who produced telecom equipment, whether it’s Nokia or Ericsson or Huawei or ZTE or Samsung. The other was the more arduous, difficult, challenging part of actually vertically integrating backwards and producing our own RAN (Radio Access Network) and our own core software, and building out our own BTS (Base Transceiver Station),” Scindia said. The minister said the achievement was made possible by an unlikely consortium of C-DOT, which is a government-owned company, to produce the core software, Tejas, which is a private sector startup, to produce the RAN and TCS as the system integrator.

“In 19 months, we built out our own 4G stack,” Scindia said. At the same time, BSNL posted its first quarterly operating profits after 18 years in the September and December quarters of 2025. Revenue grew from roughly ₹19,000 crore to ₹22,000 crore and ebitda (operating profit) grew from ₹2,195 crore to over ₹5,100 crore recently.

Besides, India also achieved the fastest 5G rollout globally, deploying approximately 500,000 towers in 22 months.

Currently, 99.9% of districts have coverage, and 35% of mobile subscribers (400 million users) are already on 5G.

He said India played catch up on 4G, and walked with the world on 5G, but the goal is to now lead the world in 6G technology. For the first time in history, India is working with international bodies like the ITU and 3GPP to set the standards for 6G through the Bharat 6G alliance, set up in 2023, which brings together telecom operators, tech companies and the government. The alliance has grown from 18 to 100 stakeholders.

The mandate of the alliance is to secure 10% of the patents when 6G standards are established, he said. Scindia said a similar transformation is also happening to India’s vast postal network, turning it into a logistics fulfilment centre. “There should be no service or goods or no commodity that cannot be sold virtually or physically from the Dak Khana,” Scindia said. He said the Indian postal system is currently undergoing a major business process re-engineering exercise.