Mukesh Ambani terms data as the new oil to fuel the fourth industrial revolution

Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, who is betting big on data-driven telecom with his Jio Infocomm, today described the digital play sweeping the world as the fourth industrial revolution and said data is the "new oil"."The foundation of the fourth industrial revolution is connectivity and data. Data is the new natural resource. We are at the beginning of an era where data is the new oil," Ambani said at the opening day of 3-day Nasscom leadership forum here. Salient feature of this revolution is "convergence of the physical biological and digital sciences" and "we are on the verge of an exponential change", he said.Predicting that India will be a key player in this revolution, Ambani said with "our large talent base, we will have a competitive advantage in this era." He expressed hope that Jio could help take India to top ten counties in terms of broadband access, from the low 155th position in 2015.Describing the protectionist statements by the new US president Donald Trump as "a blessing in disguise" for the Indian IT sector" Ambani advised the industry to focus on home market. Calling for looking at the larger picture of helping millions to resolve their problems with adoption of digital technologies, he said digitalisation will continue to face challenges in terms of privacy, security and data theft, but "with our very big advantages in the new world of digitisation, I am sure we can find solutions to our major problems"."We really have to adopt next generation technologies. As a nation we have to be the capital of real implementation of blockchain. We have the opportunity to make sure we adopt artificial intelligence and natural language processing, adopt drones in our own logistics. "I think the opportunities are immense and we now have the infrastructure to do it in our own market and make India one of the largest software markets," he said.PTIDisclaimer: Reliance Jio is owned by Reliance Industries, who also own Network18, the publisher of Firstpost and tech2.