India produces 20 per cent of world’s data: Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal

Ola founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal highlighted that India which constitutes 20 per cent of the world’s population produces 20 per cent of the world’s digital data but only one-tenth of it is stored here and the remaining data is sold to us in dollars after being processed by tech giants outside the country.

In an exclusive chat with ANI, Aggarwal said, “Everybody in India pays in dollars. You know, if I, the broader point here, the irony, India produces 20 per cent of the world’s digital data because we are the 20 per cent of the world’s population. You know, thanks to 4g and Jio and all India map data produced. So we produce 20 per cent of the world’s data”.

The Ola founder underscored that India should actually produce even more data since we are young.

“Actually, we also, as Indians, Our strength in the world of Artificial Intelligence is going to be that we are the largest population and data is what creates intelligence in AI. So we should actually produce even more data because not just are we 20 per cent of the world’s population, but we’re also young,” the OLA CEO said.

“So we are more active and hence per capita data production is more. Today we produce 20 per cent of the world’s digital data. It’s not stored in India,” He added.

The Ola CEO lamented that 90 per cent of the data is exported into global data centres which are owned by big technological giants.

“Only one-tenth of that is stored in India. 90 per cent is exported into global data centres, largely owned by big techs. And they’re not… It is processed into AI, brought back into India and sold to us in dollars,” he said.

He also said that 200 years ago, East India Company used to export cotton and now are exporting data and bringing intelligence from abroad.

“Yes. It is exactly what happened 200 years ago with the East India Company. They used to export cotton and bring clothes from abroad. Now we’re exporting data and bringing intelligence from abroad. Novo-colonialism. Techno-colonialism. Techno-colonialism. Yeah. I don’t know whether this is a word or not, but… It’s been done,” the Ola CEO added. (ANI)

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