India witnessing digital-first revolution, blockchain is the technology I believe in, says Mukesh Ambani

Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries and Asia’s richest person on Friday said he believes in blockchain technology and it will redefine financial world. In an interview at the Infinity Forum, hosted by International Financial Services Authority (IFSCA), virtually from the GIFT City, Ambani said India is witnessing a digital-first revolution and the country is on the verge of building a digital society.

“Blockchain is the technology I believe in. Blockchain will redefine financial world. Look forward to cryptocurrency and data protection bills,” ET Now quoted Ambani as saying. A data privacy bill and a cryptocurrency bill are in the pipeline and Ambani welcomed the moves by the government and praised the progress made so far.

Giving credit for the digital revolution in India to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Ambani said that the PM thinks ahead of time. “The result of that is that today we have Aadhaar and a secure system like UPI. On their strength the common man is joining the banking system,” he added.

“We are witnessing the fourth revolution – that is the digital-first revolution, where digital will be life for billions of people – which will be used in all technology – five or six kinds of technology will merge together, they will transform the whole world,” the Reliance top boss added.

The billionaire highlighted that there will be tremendous value creation in virtual place in the future. “Digital-first world will be the people’s first world, no one is the last everyone, will be first.”

He further added that data is indeed the new oil, “this new oil is for everyone, every person can be the owner and use it.”

With the 5G roll out, next year in India, India will have the most advanced digital technologies in the world, he said adding, “Jio has taken lead in this field – Jio has high-speed data which is prerequisite for revolution.”

Ambani said he was proud of the fact that Jio had taken the lead in this direction by ensuring that people had access to affordable high-speed data connectivity, a pre-requisite for the digital revolution.

“We are in the process of creating an equally affordable ecosystem of devices to enable greater adoption, supported by a faster rollout of optic fibre, cloud, and data centre infrastructure,” he said.