Talking India’s Digital Leadership with Rahul Sharma, AWS

On the sidelines of the AWS Summit 2022, Washington, Prabhu Ram, Head- Industry Intelligence Group (IIG), CyberMedia Research (CMR) sat down with Rahul Sharma, President, Worldwide Public Sector at Amazon Internet Services Private Limited (AISPL), AWS India and South Asia

A key theme that emerges in India, from AWS perspective, is one of Government embracing technology in new domains. The Indian Government always had a strong intent to double down on Cloud much before the pandemic. They have been consistent in their planning and delivery of their Cloud strategy. Over the course of the pandemic, we have witnessed citizen-centric national platforms being launched from grounds-up in India and anchored squarely on delivering on citizen outcomes.

We are focused on enabling the Government to experience emerging technologies – through concepts to pilots, and deliver on the significantly large addressable opportunity.

Q: In the backdrop of COVID-19, how do you view Government of India’s Digital Fluency, and flagship national level initiatives?

Rahul Sharma: The digital fluency within the Government is significantly high. There is keenness to learn and adopt new technologies. With Digital India, there has been a consistent strategy to bring innovations across all spheres of citizen services. At AWS, our endeavour is to work closely with the Government on realizing these digital opportunities, with the promise of Cloud.

For instance, the NITI Aayog Frontier Technologies Cloud Innovation Center (CIC) is the first AWS CIC in India, and first globally for AWS that is set-up in collaboration with a national government agency. The CIC aims to drive continuous innovation in delivering citizen services by deploying leading-edge technologies.

The National Health Authority (NHA) has been focused on bridging gaps in healthcare through focused digital health initiatives under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM). The mission leverages the entire health ecosystem, including the expertise that healthtech start- ups bring to the fore.

There are similar national-level initiatives across agriculture, spacetech, dronetech, govtech and citizen services, among others.

We are backing our endeavours on-ground with investments, including on infrastructure, the new regions, local zones coming-up later this year.

We believe that Quantum Computing is the next big technology wherein India would play a leadership role globally. We are working closely with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to establish the Quantum Computing Applications Lab that will steer and accelerate quantum computing-led research and development and enable new scientific discoveries.

State Governments are embracing Cloud to drive efficiency and overcome constraints. Over the last year, we have seen many State Governments following the leads of early Cloud adopters, such as Maharashtra and Telangana, among others. They have shown a clear vision, and intent in embracing technology.

Q: Please illustrate some of the recent tech initiatives that AWS has undertaken in India?

Rahul Sharma: The CIC recently developed COvAID during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. COvAID provided a platform for consolidating the end-to-end flow of aid received to support COVID-19 affected people, ensuring traceability and accelerating the speed at which the aid reaches beneficiaries.

Secondly, we are currently spearheading the first Joint Innovation Center (JIC) outside of China and the very first JIC dedicated to advancing the aviation industry.

For Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL), we are establishing the JIC with Intel to strengthen BIAL’s digital roadmap, drive digital innovation of Cloud, IoT, Blockchain, AI/ML, among others, for the airport, and in doing so, to provide an intuitive experience for travellers.

Q: How is AWS driving skills availability in emerging tech? How are you enabling the robust start-up ecosystem?

Rahul Sharma: Skilling is a key priority for India, and we are focused on delivering on that as well. For instance, when it comes to cloud skills, we have trained over 2Mn people from India.

I think one of the biggest opportunities for us is to make the availability of skills across the board on cloud as well as other emerging technologies. With the scale and opportunity that India accords, alongwith the vibrant Indian tech start-up ecosystem, there is a real sense of purpose in creating technologies in India for social good for the world.

India is the first country globally where we deployed the AWS Start-up Ramp program. The AWS Public Sector Start-up Ramp program aims to enable early stage public sector focused technology start-ups to build solutions on AWS.

For the public sector, we are enabling executive education programs spread over three days alongwith Indian School of Business (ISB). The Digital Transformation Program is offered exclusively for those in Government, Public Policy and Service Sector.

All said, we believe India provides a sandbox for the world for developing technologies for social good.