न्यूज

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), Singapore and France have signed up for India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) technology and talks are on with 30 more countries, said Union Minister for Railways, Communications, Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw on Tuesday, adding that start-ups in the country should think of ways to take it (UPI) to the world level.

Addressing the National Start-up Conference at Mahatma Mandir in Gandhinagar, held as part of Digital India Week 2022, Vaishnaw spoke about various initiatives taken by the central government to augment the start-up ecosystem in the country while asking young enterpreneurs to take maximum advantage of the same.

Vaishnaw said that contrary to the claims of political opponents of the current central government who termed the Start-up India initiative as “jumla”, the initiative has done very well and many foreign countries were surprised to see the progress made by India in a very short time.

“It is a thousand-mile journey and we have just taken a first step… a great first step. We must celebrate it. We have to take many many more such steps,” he added.

Talking about the Digital India GENESIS (Gen-Next Support for Innovating Start-ups) initiative of the central government, Vaishnaw said that it will give start-ups access to some of large scale government sectors such as the Railways.

Vaishnaw asked the start-ups to help the government in helping MSMEs (Micro, Small, Medium Enterprises). “Can we come up with credit solution for the MSMEs? That should be a challenge we should take up…,” Vaishnaw said, asking them to think of ways to take UPI to the world.

“Can we take UPI to the world? Already three countries have signed up. But can we take it to a large scale? Because this is fabulous solution, amazing solution. Can we take it to the world in a very big way? All the companies working in fintech… I will request all of you to look at it,” said Vaishnaw.

Vaishnaw also asked the start-ups to explore ways of taking Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) to the world level on the lines of UPI.

“Can we expand the open network for digital commerce (ONDC) to make it the next UPI? So, I request all of you to take a serious look at it, specially the people in e-commerce. Look at ONDC, see if how it can be a great platform. We believe that it can be the next UPI. So look at it if how you can leverage it for your business,” the minister said.

During his speech, Vaishnaw also referred to the BHASHINI (Bhasha Interface for India) initiative recently launched by the Central government.

“BHASHINI has been created with a vision by which people speaking any language can be connected with people speaking any other langugage. And languages are beyond political or geographic boundaries. We do believe that Bhashini, which has been created for Indian languages, can become a global platform for all other languages in the world,” Vaishnaw said.

The Indian Express |