India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed a handful of benefits for the startup ecosystem and to accelerate the growth of digital services in the annual budget Monday as the South Asian nation looks to revive the economy that plunged into deepest recorded slump amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Sitharaman said the nation has earmarked 1,500 crore Indian rupees ($205.3 million) to incentivize the adoption of digital payments. Paytm, Google Pay, and PhonePe are locked in an intense battle to drive people in India to pay digitally, but the firms have struggled to find a viable business model with their core payments service.
Many firms were hoping that the government will permit them to charge for merchants transactions. No announcement on this front was made today.
The budget also proposed to extend social security benefits to gig workers and other platform workers and launch a website to help these workers find employment, said Sitharaman. These…