Arundhati Bhattacharya, Chairperson and CEO of Salesforce India, has expressed her appreciation for the Union Budget 2024, describing it as a balanced budget with a distinct focus on women, youth, and job creation. She commended the budget’s emphasis on generating ample opportunities for all, despite global uncertainties.
Arundhati Bhattacharya highlighted the government’s initiatives towards skilling, boosting the participation of women in the workforce, driving the use of technology in agriculture, and supporting SMEs. “The Budget 2024 presented was a balanced one, with a distinct focus on women, youth and job creation, emphasising the sustained efforts to generate ample opportunities for all. As the honourable Finance Minister mentioned, India’s economic growth continues to be the shining exception despite global uncertainties and will remain so in years ahead. Initiatives towards skilling, boosting the participation of women in the workforce, driving the use of technology in agriculture and supporting SMEs that are the greatest employment generators are particularly notable. These measures provide the much-needed fuel to drive India’s economic growth,” she said.
She also appreciated the investments being made on education, employment, and skilling. “The provision of Rs 1.48 lakh crore this year made for education, employment, and skilling is commendable. In addition, employment-linked skills are expected to benefit 2.1 lakh youths, particularly first-time job seekers. The proposed revision of the Model Skill Loan Scheme is also expected to help 25,000 students every year,” added Bhattacharya.
Bhattacharya was also appreciative of the enhancement of the Mudra loan amount to Rs 20 lakh. “Enhancing the Mudra loan amount to ₹ 20 lakh is a step in the right direction. Developing a new credit assessment model, based on the scoring of digital footprints of MSMEs in the economy is expected to be a significant improvement over the traditional assessment of credit eligibility based only on asset or turnover criteria and will help cover MSMEs without a formal accounting system to access the same and drive true financial inclusion,” she commented.
The intent to drive the participation of women in the workforce has been noted by Bhattacharya to be particularly encouraging. “It is also encouraging to note the intent to drive participation of women in the workforce. This has been backed up by provisions to set up hostels, establishing creches creating partnerships to organize women-specific skilling programs. A focus on geriatric care would have helped create more well-rounded benefits as women often need to drop out of the workforce in the absence of any infrastructural support for the same,” she stated.
Arundhati Bhattacharya further urged the Indian Government to encourage ease of doing business. “The depth of talent in India is well-recognised. To capitalise on this, incentives encouraging ease of doing business while exploring ways in which IT can be used for further formal job creation, such as improving citizen services, will address the needs of our large population resulting in improving standards of living and ensuring better targeting of subsidies,” said the Salesforce CEO.