Estimating contribution of digital economy in India

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation process and increased society’s reliance on digital adoption. In light of this, private institutions, academics, and government organizations have focused on developing methods to measure digitization. These methods utilize available information about digital industries and products. The measurement framework presented in this study aims to capture the level of digitization across 65 sectors in the economy. This framework expands on the idea of including industries related to both the core digital economy and the digital-dependent economy. The industries included in the digital-dependent economy were determined through an analysis of digital occupations. The feasibility of the measurement framework is supported by the data available in National Account Statistics and Socio-economic surveys. For the year 2017-18, the digital economy contributed 7.38% to India’s total Gross Value Added. In the era of the digital revolution, it is both necessary and challenging to quantify the digital presence in all sectors of the economy. This article is an attempt to address this challenge.