India should become software hub: IT Secretary

 India should focus on becoming a major software producer, said Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Secretary for the Ministry of Electronics and IT, here on Tuesday.

"It's time for us to move towards software products. We have been consumers of software, but not producers of software. It's time for India to move towards being a software product nation," the Secretary said speaking at the Digital Governance Tech Summit 2019, organised by Microsoft.

Sawhney said as India had become a major mobile phone manufacturer and meets most local demand and the government was now focused on the mobile and electronic component manufacturing.

"Increasingly we are trying to bring the supply chain into the country. It's important for us and we are moving in that direction with policy and other initiatives," he said.

He said the Indian mobile manufacturing industry had come a long way from assembling 6 crore mobile phones in 2014-15 to 29 crore in 2018-19.

At the meet, Microsoft India announced the "Digital Governance Tech Tour" whereby it would train 5,000 government IT officials in new-age technologies, like artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing over 12 months. IANS