New Delhi: The union special secretary, logistics, ministry of commerce & industries, Pawan Kumar Agarwal said “Logistics and Supply Chain are omnipresent issues across the sectors but we realized their importance during COVID times”.

He said this at IAMAI 15th India Digital Summit while giving keynote on Building future ready logistics network for the Country .

Agarwal stated that “Unified laws across the different modes of transport is completed by the government however process on streamlining and backend system enabling are currently underway.” 

Agarwal stressed that use of technology in logistics is a very important area and perhaps, one area where lot of work needs to be done. “Different departments are already working towards systems and initiatives in this direction and moving forward the idea is to merge all these individual system and build a logistics data stand which can be used by new age companies to give market solutions”, he said. 

In another session on Farm to Frontier Model for India’s Development, Lok Sabha MP Jayant Sinha said, “India is forging a totally different development model – the farm to frontier model as opposed to the traditional one of farm to factory”. He also spoke on the need of upgradation of skills and supporting people with the right ecosystem so that they can produce more. “The individual needs to be embedded in a system where they can produce more – that is the path of economic development,” he said.

Sinha explained his notion of Aatmanirbhar Bharat as Creation of Competitive, Sustainable and Resilient (CSR) industries in India. He also talked about how technology is the best solution to increasing productivity and to grow faster. The answer has always been technology to improve productivity – there is no other way. There is a need to give people the technology assistance so that they can be as adept to improve productivity and can generate more, earn more and become prosperous, he explained.

Deep Kalra, Founder and CEO of MakeMyTrip, in conversation with Prashant Tandon, Co-Founder & CEO, 1mg shared his experiences as a pioneer of digital entrepreneurship in India for the past two decades. Shri Kalra also gave his take about the future of the digital economy and India’s role in it. He explained that Digital India is going to be a driver of growth in the decade to come. Owing to the nature of innovation and the speed of innovation in the digital space, India will be able to innovate their way to becoming global leaders in the space. He added that it is important for the Government to catch-up with the sector, but entrepreneurs should not rely on that to compete. 

Kalra further clarified that all burgeoning new entrepreneurs can do is to minimize their fixed costs and find ample resources to persist and innovate till the market realizes their value. 

The event comprised of six tracks: Building National Digital Infrastructure; Marketing for the Masses; Innovative digital services beyond the first 100 million paid customers; Digitally Recharging Small and Medium Business; Digital Policies from Global Perspective but Indian Reality; Nurturing Indian Startups.