Self-regulation by Edtech Companies a Welcome Move: Jayant Sinha

Welcoming edtech companies’ move to form a self-regulatory body, Jayant Sinha, Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha) and Chairman, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, Government of India, said: “Self-regulation is very important. Many aspects of competitive conduct, market conduct is best left to market participants to sort out for themselves.”

While speaking at the 16th edition of the India Digital Summit, organised by IAMAI, he said: “It is only when self-regulation and competitive conduct goes past ethical and other norms that is when you have to establish legal rules of the games. My only appeal to the industry will be to make sure that it is being done in a very genuine and thoughtful manner and it reflects the best self-regulation in the world and I hope they have benchmarked themselves to edtech companies around the world and other self-regulatory regimes that might exist globally.”

On crypto currency, he reiterated that a balancing act needs to be strike between innovation and regulations. “The goal of regulation is to ensure orderly functioning of markets, consumer protection, fair and ethical conduct of the competitors. At the same time, innovations create new value and provide new ways of doing thing. So, a balance needs to be struck between innovation and regulations.”

Talking about global listing of startups, he mentioned that global listing raises visibility and enables startups to grow on the global stage, on the other hand, the revenue leakage that goes along with that remains a concern, “we can’t have a situation where all India’s important economic activities are domiciled outside India.”

During his address at the India Digital Summit, he also called upon the startups to help in achieving the net zero target. “More than Covid, people are dying because of air pollution. We need to start thinking digital and green both,” he said.