India in Ease of Doing Digital Business ranking | Photo Credit: BCCL

Key Highlights India has been assigned the 38th position among the 42 nations with a score of 2.17, while China and Russia stood at 39th and 42nd place with scores of 2.14 and 1.96, respectively Earlier last year itself, India leapfrogged 23 countries to grab the 77th place in Ease of Doing Business Index prepared by the World Bank

New Delhi: In a major breakthrough, India has managed to rank above the world’s largest exporter China and even above Russia - the world's largest country by area, in the criteria of Ease of Doing Digital Business index. Earlier last year itself, India leapfrogged 23 countries to grab the 77th place in Ease of Doing Business Index prepared by the World Bank.

According to the prestigious Harvard Business Review, India has been assigned the 38th position among the 42 nations with a score of 2.17, while China and Russia stood at 39th and 42nd place with scores of 2.14 and 1.96, respectively. The United States has topped the list followed by the United Kingdom, whereas Japan has grabbed the fifth position.

“India’s strongest digital platform is that of online freelance, especially in software. Four in 10 freelance workers in software development and technology are based in India,” HBR said in the report. Surprisingly, the economic crisis-hit South American nation Argentina has managed to grab the 37th position in Ease of Doing Digital Business.

Harvard Business Review has prepared the Ease of Doing Digital Business Index in a move to rank countries in ‘ease’ or ‘difficulty’ of doing ‘digital business’. The HBR’s Ease of Doing Digital Business has incorporated ‘World Bank Ease of Doing Business Index 2019’, ‘digital & analog foundations’, ‘data accessibility’, ‘e-commerce’, ‘digital media’, ‘sharing economy’ and ‘online freelance’ as the key parameters to derive the final score.

The countries constituting the most significant markets for digital businesses worldwide, offering a consistent set of data across a wide range of indicators have been selected for the rankings, HBR said.

Meanwhile, India’s ranking has improved substantially in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index especially in the Narendra Modi government’s first five-year term (2014-2019). In the last two years itself, India has jumped as much as 53 places. Interestingly, this has been registered as the biggest improvement since 2011 shown by any country of a similar size.

In the corresponding five-year term, the New York-headquartered global credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service upgraded India’s sovereign credit rating to ‘Baa2’ from ‘Baa3’, changing the outlook to 'stable' from 'positive’. Moody’s, one of the top three rating agencies in the world, had updated India’s sovereign credit rating in 2017, for the first time since 2004.