Chennai, Nov 30 (FN Agency) “Our Information Technology department is working towards introducing new policies and also revise current policies including the cyber policy to make it more relevant to industry,” Tamil Nadu Minister for IT and Digital Services T.Mano Thangaraj said today. In his address at the first edition of TechNext 2022 – “Future of Tech Web 3.0” Conference organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here, he said “we would continue to explore the possibility of bringing policies aligned to Web 3.0 to support the startups and the overall technology ecosystem in the State.”
“Tamil Nadu is the SAAS Capital of India and we are far ahead of other cities in the country”, he said, adding, Madurai for instance saw a 30 percent digital growth and it is the same for Coimbatore when compared to last year. Also, iTNT Hub, India’s First Emerging and DeepTech Innovation Network announced a few months back will be launched in the coming 2 to 3 months,” he added.
The Minister launched a special Tamil Nadu specific Non-Fungible Token (NFT) titled – Netru, Indru, Nalai (Yesterday, Today and Tommorow) via Virtual Reality and released a CII report titled Metaverse and Web 3.0 opportunities in India– Nurturing Tamil Nadu’s growth ambitions through nextgen technologies in association with KPMG. The highlights of the CII report pointed out that Tamil Nadu, especailly Chennai is emerging as a technology hub with a broad spectrum of new age technologies including metaverse, web 3.0, blockchain and others. Citing a few achievements, the CII report pointed – TN’s first virtual reality lab for education – Meta Kalvi on metaverse for government schools, GuardianLink’s NFT gaming space with the launch of its web 3.0 cricket game, the Meta Cricket League (MCL), TimesPro’s future-centric and tech-driven programmes meant for learners to learn new-age learning through cutting-edge programmes in various web 3.0 technologies such as blockchain, crypto currency, metaverse and NFT and a lot more. The report also highlighted that ”Tamil Nadu is to become a USD one Trillion economy by 2030, Metaverse, Web 3.0 and related technologies will help propel the overall GSDP by a couple of percentage points as they boost efficiencies via virtual display and merchandise opportunities”.
Dr. Neeraj Mittal,Secretary, Information Technology and Digital Services Department, in his special address said, “Information Technology is no more a vertical but a horizontal. The development of technology will not stop and the State is making every effort to keep abreast of the technological happenings,”. “The iTNT hub would have 13 different technology verticals when it will be launched. We will make sure the entire 500 colleges spread across Tamil Nadu, with over half a million graduates passing out will get to experiment, learn and taste the life of an entrepreneur and maximize the possibilities of succeeding,” he added. “We cannot anymore take the changes in technology lightly as technology is no more an enabler. If one does not leverage technology rightly or choose technology carefully, it can not only cause distraction but in some cases destruction too,” said J Murugavel, Chairman, CII Chennai Zone and Founder and CEO, Matrimony.com, in his opening remarks. “India has around 700 million active Internet users while the World has over 5.07 bn active internet users. The internet users worldwide is roughly 65 percent of the current population and India is fast catching up.
It is predicted there would be over 900 million users in India by 2025 thanks to the advancement of technology and 5G,” said Kewyn George, Convenor, Tech/Startup Panel, CII Chennai Zone & Centre Head & Director – Information Services, Expeditors International India in his address. “India has close to 500 Web 3.0 startups with over 75,000 people trained in this platform. This roughly translates to 11 % of Web 3.0 talent that India has as of today. The current situation that India faces today is the new STEM graduates are not getting trained on this platform and is the biggest challenge today,” he added. Another challenge is the widening skill gap on Web 3.0 and how can this gap be filled. Tamil Nadu has nearly 400,000 STEM graduates which is nearly 20 percent of the total STEM graduates from India and is rightly positioned to take the lead in this regard.