The theme for this year’s event was — Pragati — meaning growth. According to the organiser, at 75 years of independence, India is one of the leading countries in the world. It has established itself as a land of entrepreneurs, manufacturers, and technology services. For India to realise its true potential and achieve the goal of becoming a trillion-dollar digital economy, it needs to increase the pace of digitising small businesses, creating more jobs, and making itself a hub for manufacturing and innovation.

Keeping this in mind, spread across two days, the virtual summit focused on key topics around small business digitisation, exports and startup enablement, innovation, skilling and job creation.

Industry leaders who attended the event included Karan Adani of Adani Ports and SEZ; CP Gurnani of Tech Mahindra; Dave Clark of Amazon; Sudhir Sitapati of Godrej Consumer Products; Ananth Narayanan of Mensa Brands; Dr V Anantha Nageswaran chief economic advisor, Government of India; T Koshy of Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC); Montek Singh Ahluwalia, economist, former deputy chairman of planning commission; among others. 

Manish Tiwary, vice-president, Amazon, said the success of the Amazon brand depends on small and medium businesses (SMBs), local stores, and entrepreneurs. Thus, the company wants to help small businesses collaborate with technology across the country. This includes both traditional artisans and new-age entrepreneurs.

Tiwary also shared some numbers to showcase how far the country has come in adapting to the digital marketplace. He said, Amazon has gathered over 50% of the 1.1-million sellers on Amazon.in. Also, 85% of Amazon’s new customers, and 65% of customer orders come from tier-two and below geographies. This shows the reach of the eCommerce site and how both sellers and buyers have embraced Amazon. 

Tiwary also added that more than 8-million local stores and small businesses are now using Amazon Pay.

Rajeev Chandrashekar, minister of state in the ministry, skill development and entrepreneurship, and electronics and information technology, said “Ecommerce and logistics infrastructure are the critical parts of the equation for India's success in being a large, trusted manufacturing partner to the world.” 

Montek Singh Ahluwalia, former deputy chairman of planning commission, said that the most important thing for India to be a leading exporter is “having good products and being competitive.”