Rekha Sethi delivered the welcome address to over 150 attendees, comprising industry stakeholders, policymakers, government of India officials, students and media. Sethi’s address was followed by opening remarks from Berenice Voets, who emphasized the importance of trade in contributing to India’s growth, development and poverty alleviation, as well as the potential of digital trade to boost the growth in the domestic sectors.

Digital trade holds important promises for growth in Asia, and with right policies it will enhance the participation of Small and Medium Enterprises in trade and create more inclusive growth, Voets said.

Following the remark, chief guest Dinesh Tyagi, Chief Executive Officer of CSC e-Governance Services India Limited, gave his keynote address. He spoke on various initiatives undertaken by the government in promoting digitization in India, especially in the agriculture and insurance sectors.

Shortly after the keynote address, Genevieve Lim presented the key findings from the report. “Today, digital trade has already created huge positive impact for India’s domestic economy. This contribution is expected to grow 14-fold to reach Rs. 3,331 thousand crores by 2030,” Lim said.

However, there are concerns such as protecting the privacy of citizens, localizing data for national security, domestic firms losing out to large multinationals and protecting the local tax base that need to be addressed for reaping the digital trade opportunity, she added.

Thereafter, Director of Centre for Management Education, AIMA, Raj Agarwal, thanked all the attendees and Hinrich Foundation for their work on the digital trade report before hosting a tea break.

The event resumed after the break with the first panel session, titled “Securing Digital Trade – Privacy and Cyber Security”. The panel discussion was chaired by Vipin Tyagi, Executive Director at C-Dot and the panelists included:

Manish Sehgal – Partner, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP
Deepak Pareek – Founder, MyCrop
Aaron Kamath – Lawyer, Nishith Desai Associates

In the opening statement by panelist, Sehgal spoke on free flow of cross border data.” If you don’t allow free flow of data, then we are isolating from the world. The value of data is important and it needs to be intact. The flow of data needs to be mutually beneficial between two countries,” he said.

He was followed by Pareek, who emphasized the importance of data. He also demonstrated to the attendees how a single photograph can both be a data bit as well as a privacy concern. “Data in not new oil but new soil, allowing infinite ideas to germinate into value to businesses and society,” he explained.

To provide a legal perspective on access to data, Kamath said that regulation and enforcement on accessing data by government is low. Domestic firms generally use foreign firms cloud and servers to store data, which does not provide access to government.

The session ended with a lively Q&A session. It saw industry stakeholders and students ask questions about the importance and threat of data.