NEW DELHI: Five years after India launched its flagship initiatives—Digital India and Startup India—Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged Indian developers to throw their weight behind creating Made-in-India apps.
On Saturday, Modi urged India’s IT workforce to take part in an innovation challenge to make “world-class apps” and help create an “Atma Nirbhar App Ecosystem”.
The move is seen as an effort to fill the void left behind by the 59 Chinese, including TikTok, that were recently banned.
“This challenge is for you if you have such a working product or if you feel you have the vision and expertise to create such products. I urge all my friends in the tech community to participate,” Modi wrote in a LinkedIn post.
The challenge will be regulated under the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (Meity) along with Atal Innovation Mission and run in two tracks: Promotion of Existing Apps and Development of New Apps.
The challenge has been launched in eight broad categories: Office Productivity & Work from Home, Social Networking, E-Learning, Entertainment, Health & Wellness, Business including Agritech and Fintech, News and Games.