India attracted close to US$5 billion in investment, creating 80,000 direct jobs at different skill-levels. Indian app ecosystem contributes more than US$20 billion in 2015-16 which is expected to rise to US$270 billion by 2020. The impact on job market has been impressive where for each job in App economy created 2.9 jobs in direct, indirect and induced forms 42. Nepal is yet to be anywhere near to realizing the full-potential of its app-ecosystem. Investment Estimation Digital India, an accelerated ICT development program with additional budget to the tune of US$17 billion for the period of 2015-2025 is forecasted to help Indian GDP by 20-30% of additional growth by 2025. The additional value add to GDP is to come from increased revenue, job creation, foreign and domestic investments and gained efficiency across sectors. Indian budget on ICT has been growing increasingly with further projects being added under the Digital India umbrella. The expected impact on GDP has been measured to the tune of US$500 billion to US$1 trillion by 2025, achievable by simultaneous development across different verticals impacting growth and usage of ICT. Relative comparison of ICT projects across Southeast Asian economies have also been taken into account while putting in the estimated investment and potential benefits for Nepal. However, Nepal, still in the early stages of ICT adoption in several services and manufacturing sector and having smaller economy and geographical size would require the budget to be a lot lesser. It is estimated the overall direct government expenditure to be close to the US$350 million for Nepal to achieve an accelerated growth in different aspects of ICT over a period of 10 years. The estimates have been made by taking into account Nepal’s GDP and Purchasing Power Parity. The investment in next 5-years should be on higher proportion to facilitate the rapid build-up of basic infrastructure in form of fiber cables, telecom set-up, skilling and re-skilling, R&D, industry development etc. Current budget of Nepal in rural and hilly ICT development is US$105 million, which is expected to be spent on optical fiber and rural internet development. Currently Nepal has assigned US$35.5 million for lying of optical fiber networks in hilly and rural areas. The biggest challenge for Nepal’s ITC infrastructure has been slow rate of expenditure which was 2.6% of total budget till 2015. Example/ Case Studies on impact of internet / ICT in some Asian countries – South East Asia Southeast Asia has emerged as a leading hub of internet fueled growth and has seen rise of ICT based economy. More developed economies as Singapore and Malaysia have been driving the internet-based services. Developing economies as Vietnam and Philippines have emerged as leading destinations in IT outsourcing and BPO industry. As highlighted by Google Temasek report 2018, the region is expected to see more than 1.7 million full- time with growth in internet economy by 2025. The number of people employed in high-skilled internet sector will double from 100,000 to 200,000 while creating opportunities in sectors as ecommerce and ride-hailing services along with high-skill jobs, the number of jobs will triple from the jobs created in 2018. The value of internet economy in the region among six major countries has been growing at accelerating rate, doubling from 2015 to 2018 reaching US$72 million. The size of internet’s contribution is expected to be US$240 million by 2025, which is US$40 billion more than last year’s estimate from Google Temasek. 42 Estimating the value of new-generation internet based applications in India, July 2017, ICRIER-Broadband India Forum 38