February 3, 2022: We share some more reactions to the Indian Union Budget 2022, that  we received today:
NASSCOM: Strengthening the collective vision for an inclusive Digital Bharat, the Union Budget 2022 sets the tone for India’s techade. The government’s sharp focus on technology-enabled development and aligned investments in key sectors like healthcare, fintech, education, infrastructure, R&D, start-ups, agriculture, and manufacturing is a testament to India’s technology prowess and the capabilities of the Indian technology industry to provide a fillip to sectors across. The budget introduced measures ranging from taxation to investment to help boost the country’s economic activities, digital governance, ease of doing business, ensuring job creation, and marking India’s transition to an inclusive Digital Economy. 
Promoting technology-enabled development, energy transition, public-private partnership, focus on skilling, and climate action, the budget echoes the vision for India's techade encouraging the use of emerging technologies benefiting and readying India. Encouraged to see the government focused on digital skilling to encourage continual skilling avenues, sustainability, and employability through online training, programmes, and industry collaborations, as well as the establishment of skilling e-labs for simulated learning settings. These are positive moves toward making India a global talent powerhouse. 
The budget also focused on emerging technologies like drones, Deep Tech, Fintech, HealthTech, EdTech, etc. highlighting that India is moving in the right direction of embracing change and innovation. The focus was also laid on 5G technology, as an enabler of growth and development across the telecom and ICT sectors. 
The PLI Scheme has been viewed as a ground-breaking initiative, and with the government announcing it for 14 sectors, it is expected that the initiative will create over 60 lakh new jobs as well as additional new production of Rs 30 lakh crore during the next 5 years. The move encourages more investment in Indian soil, as the returns seem to be meritorious. 
Rajesh Maurya, Regional Vice President, India and SAARC, Fortinet: In this budget the Government has made a strong economic statement with its focus on public investments to spur growth. Forward looking and catering to an aspirational Digital India the budget once again lays its emphasis on technology with the launch of Digital Currency using blockchain, Digital University for education in different Indian languages, roll out of 5G and boost to Start-ups.Climate action is among the top 4 priorities for the Government. Climate change continues to pose a significant threat, and all business and public organizations across the country must do their part to address it. Skilling programs and partnerships with industry will be re-oriented to promote continuous skilling avenues, sustainability, and employability. The launch of Desh-Stack e-portal will provide the ecosystem for skilling and livelihood. Fortinet has been dedicated to closing the cybersecurity skills gap by making all its NSE self-paced training courses free for everyone.
Prof T. K. Srikanth, Head of E-Health Research Center, IIIT Bangalore: The E-Health Research Center at IIITB has been working with NIMHANS, National Health Mission, Govt of Karnataka, on e-Manas, a first of its kind, software platform for mental health management. This has been deployed by the Govt of Karnataka and is being extended to the monitoring of the DMHP program as well as psychiatric rehabilitative services. As part of the tele mental health network that NIMHANS will now help setup, IIITB will help integrate eManas with tele-health services, thus providing a comprehensive platform for mental health care that can scale up nationally.” 

Vamsi Krishna, CEO & Co-Founder, Vedantu: The COVID-induced gap inlearning needs to be addressed on priority and EdTech platforms should continue to ensure that students receive uninterrupted learning in such challenging times. By providing students easy access to quality learning, this year’s budget lays a clear emphasis to reduce the gap between students in remote areas and education. Initiatives such as the 'One Class One TV Channel' and the E-Vidya scheme is a welcome move that will drive impact at scale and bridge the
language divide amongst students from small-town India. We believe that this budget rightly aligns with our vision of democratizing education by providing students access to high quality learning, improving learning outcomes andthereby contributing to a vibrant knowledge economy.
Sumit Ghosh, Co-founder & CEO, Chingari App: Today can be considered as an historic day for the Indian Digital journey. The much-awaited welcome by the Indian government to the use of Digital Currency and Crypto transactions will soon lead India to be one of the top economies of the world. Investing in and utilizing advanced technologies like blockchain is what helps the nation grow at par with the other countries globally. With $GARI Social Tokens listing on 19 global exchanges and Chingari transforming the Web3 universe for its creators, we are proud to be a part of the digital and crypto revolution.
V Ranganathan, Managing Director, Cerebra Integrated Technologies :The Budget is a positive one and we are glad to see a thrust on local manufacturing and the ‘Make in India’ program continues to be a focus area for the government. The Finance Minister has mentioned a policy for e-waste and reverse logistics as well as reduction in the duties for capital manufacturing goods. We are keen to see what this will mean for the e-waste recycling industry as the country is working towards meeting it’s climate targets.
Mohit Yadav, Cofounder, BOLT: Encouraging energy as a service will supercharge the adoption of electric vehicles and give rise to small EV charging entrepreneurs in the form of local shops across the nation. This will help in developing the requisite charging  ecosystem and is positive for the domestic EV space. The provision of mobility zones is a welcome move as they will help increase EV adoption and charging infrastructure for the fleet as well as commercial vehicles.
Rajosik Banerjee, Partner and Head, Financial Risk Management, KPMG in India:Digital Rupee using blockchain technology will lead to stable, efficient, regulated payments and settlements and lowered transaction cost. This initiative is expected to boost the digital economy and reduce leakages by lowering dependency on cash.
Gautam Rege, Co-founder, and Director, Josh Software: After listening to the Indian budget, it’s obvious that the focus on digital transformation is huge. It’s very encouraging to see the government take efforts to bring digitization in rural India. This is going to enable a lot of FinTech companies to tap into the vast majority of rural India for digitizing payments, collections and probably improving the quality of life. Innovation will sprout in the direction of media content, OTT platforms, digital payments for the rural sector - a new market opportunity for start-up companies in India. The introduction of cryptocurrencies and taxation around the currency is going to be immensely complicated. It’s a wait-and-watch to see what the government says about regulating cryptocurrencies. It will take its own sweet time but in the end, I think, it’s a step in the right direction.