'Digital India' To Attract FDI, Create Jobs: Anil Agarwal

BENGALURU: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Digital India' drive will attract foreign direct investment in the country and generate jobs, Vedanta Group Chairman Anil Agarwal said. 

"PM's Digital India initiative would prove to be a significant step towards 'One Connected India' and generate employment, investments, FDIs," Agarwal, who heads metal and mining conglomerate Vedanta Group, said in a tweet. 

The tweet comes ahead of Modi inaugurating the Digital India Week tomorrow in the capital. The initiative aims to digitally deliver all the essential services to citizens and transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy by leveraging IT. 

Besides Agarwal, industry leaders like Cyrus Mistry, MukeshAmbani, Azim Premji, Pawan Munjal, Sunil Mittal, Kumar Manglam Birla and Anil Ambani are expected to be present at the launch. 

Vedanta company Sterlite Technologies Ltd, which is into development as well as delivery of products, solutions and infrastructure for telecom & power transmission networks globally, is eyeing the opportunity to be one of the key players in Digital India initiative. 

STL is undertaking Fiber-to-the-Home deployment in India to enable high speed broadband connectivity and is developing several transmission infrastructure projects spanning over 5,000 Circuit Kms across India. 

It plans to invest 300-400 crore on expanding its fibre and cable manufacturing capacities to cater to increased demand mainly due to the data network expansion of telecom operators and the government's National Optic Fibre Network project that aims to connect 2,50,000 panchayats, as per the company. 

It has supplied cable for the National Optic Fibre Network rollout across 50,000 panchayats. 

STL that makes power transmission and optic-fibre products has 11 manufacturing plants, out of which nine are in India and one each in China and Brazil. It has two plants in India that produce 20 million kilometres of fibre which will be expanded to 30 million by 2017. 

The Vedanta Group arm has recently signed an agreement with Ericsson to work together in driving Smart Sustainable City initiatives in India.
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