Since the pandemic, cloud computing has emerged as a mission-critical technology for enterprises, governments, and consumers. It is not just the underpinning technology for digital transformation, but it is also enabling innovation for and collaboration among ecosystem players.
As India aims to become a $1 trillion digital economy by 2026, cloud computing has the potential to transform the Indian economy technologically and make it more resilient and inclusive.
According to a report by NASSCOM titled “Future of Cloud and Its Economic Impact: Opportunity for India ”. Cloud has the potential to account for 8 per cent of India’s GDP in 2026 growing 4x over the next five years.
Key sectors contributing to this GDP growth will be Financial Services, Communication, Media & Entertainment and Industrials. Similarly, cloud has the potential to create 14 million jobs in 2026 growing 3x over the next five years.
Cloud can contribute to a country’s GDP through direct and indirect impacts. The value added from cloud has the potential to contribute US$310-380 billion to India’s GDP in 2026, accounting for 8 per cent of GDP.
GDP impact includes the contribution from cloud adjacent technologies as well since cloud acts as a convergence platform for other technologies.
“Cloud continues to be the foundational pillar for innovation and collaboration. Cloud services are expected to accelerate R&D in India as more organisations leverage cloud-based data platforms for collaborative research. Cloud also supports startups and SMBs in innovation by providing access to the same high-end technologies as larger organisations without the burden of high investments,” said Debjani Ghosh, President, NASSCOM.
She further added that the recent COVID-19 pandemic has been an unexpected catalyst with enterprises across sectors accelerating their digital transformation journey.
The Indian consumer is also leading the digital adoption trend of 830+ million Internet subscribers, and 4.6+ billion UPI transactions (as of Jan-2022); India is therefore becoming a mobile-first consumer economy. One common thread running through these trends is Cloud Computing which is integral for all digital transformation initiatives.
Cloud has become a strategic priority for enterprises, governments and SMBs today. Cloud’s potential is boundless, and it forms a crucial foundation for successful digital transformation.
Cloud underpins several emerging technologies like AI/ML, IOT, RPA, AR/VR, etc. which rely on cloud computing to maximise their benefit. Cloud adoption will be mission critical for India to realise its digital India mission and emerge as a US$1 trillion economy, the report added.
Digital India, a unique flagship program of the Government of India was launched in 2015 with a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.
Cloud and cloud-enabled technologies are capable of powering the core themes of Digital India namely, digital infrastructure as a core utility to every citizen, digital delivery of governance & services on demand, and digital empowerment of citizens.
Evolution of Cloud
About five years ago, cloud usage in India revolved around the ease of using storage, servers, and running data centres more efficiently. Lately, cloud is playing a pivotal role in helping Indian businesses and government accelerates their digital transformation journey through infrastructure, platform, and software solutions.
Hyperscalers have played a key role in accelerating cloud adoption by seeding superior service offerings supported by Indian service providers across system integration, data centre services and SaaS solutions.
Globally, cloud adoption has been rising over the last five years with increased data generation and the need for data storage, data analytics and data insights solutions.
Cloud mature economies like US, UK and Singapore have been leading global cloud adoption. With rising digitisation across the world, the global public cloud market has been growing at a healthy CAGR of 26 per cent and the Indian public cloud market has at 44 per cent CAGR (2016-2021E).
Although the Indian cloud market has outpaced the global market in terms of growth rate, India accounts for only ~1.5 per cent of the global public cloud market owing to its nascent stage of cloud adoption.
India’s cloud growth has been accelerated by several factors like the growing digital population, the inflow of investments, digitisation of enterprises and favourable government policies. The multiplier effect of the digital ecosystem results in digital enterprises being interconnected and supporting each other to offer a holistic digital experience to consumers.
Cloud adoption in one business amplifies and catalyses adoption in other businesses of the digital ecosystem. These accelerators form a strong base for India to power cloud adoption and growth in the coming years.
