India's digital ecosystem is undergoing a historic evolution: Taranjit Singh Sandhu

India's digital ecosystem, backed by a thriving startup culture, is undergoing a historic evolution and American companies should act quickly to benefit from this new-found opportunity, New Delhi's top diplomat in the US has told a powerful Silicon Valley body.

Under the Prime Minister's (Narendra Modi) Digital India initiative, India's digital space is witnessing rapid transformation, India's Ambassador to the US Taranjit Singh Sandhu said on Tuesday in his address to the annual Washington DC trip of the powerful Bay Area Council.

The whole B2B (business-to-business), B2C (business-to-consumer) ecosystem, is undergoing a historic evolution, backed by a thriving startup culture. It is estimated that by 2023, India will have a connected market, of up to 700 million smartphones, and about 800 million internet users, he said.

During their interaction with Sandhu, the only ambassador to address the annual event of the Bay Area Council, technology and innovation partnership emerged as a key area of cooperation between two sides and there were lots of interest on both sides to enhance engagement on the issue.

Sandhu told members of the Bay Area Council that India also has a large untapped market for financial services. India sees mobile technology, fintech and a cashless society as key to financial empowerment, and inclusion. Certain estimates project that the fintech market, in India, that includes regular retail banking, to e-commerce, may become a trillion dollar market, by 2023, he said. US companies, he noted, have already taken a keen interest in the Indian tech space.