The world has changed forever and digitisation is the new mandate for businesses. With the shift in consumer preferences, working from home policies, improvement in online collaboration; and the massive growth of online payments and fintech apps - digitalisation is a part of everyone’s lives. For businesses, this is both an opportunity and a challenge. Those who adapt well, will grow to become the enterprises of tomorrow.
This is the impetus behind CNBCTV18.com presents Digital Bharat 2.0 initiative in association with AWS, which aims to create a strong digital community that helps support SMEs and carve the path for enterprises in their digitalisation journeys.
According to the CISCO 2020 APAC SMB Digital Maturity Study, 69% of SMBs are accelerating digitalisation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The top 3 technology investment priorities for most businesses are cloud, security and upgradation of the overall IT infrastructure. Notably, 19% SMBs understand and acknowledge the need to digitalise to improve their customer experiences, and 18% want to do so to improve operations and service delivery. However, 60% businesses recognise that the competition is already transforming, and they need to transform to keep pace with the rest. It is fairly certain that SMBs have a clear understanding of the need and the link between cloud adoption, innovation and business growth.
Currently, India’s 6 crore SMBs are seen as an important catalyst in helping the economy; employing over 114 million people. Incidentally, SMBs in India account for30% of the GDP as per the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). The CISCO studyestimates that US$158 to 216 billion could be added to the country's GDP by 2024 due to the digitalisation of SMBs.
Another NASSCOM study estimates that India’s Public Cloud market stands at ₹170 billion in FY2020 and is growing at ~30% CAGR till FY2025 to reach ₹630 billion. They too, find that 60% are already using cloud, and that best-in class SMBs that have adopted cloud have been able to drive 25-30% productivity improvement and 15-20% reduction in operational costs.
In a recent Techshala on CNBCTV18.com presents Digital Bharat 2.0 in association with AWS, Gopalkrishnan Ramaswamy, Technology Leader, SMB India and SAARC, AISPL talks about the mindset that keeps SMBs from adopting Cloud. "There is a tendency to maintain the status quo. Many are daunted by the technology available to them. What got them to this place, to being the profitable backbone of this country, isn't what is going to take them into an increasingly globalised future."
Gopalkrishnan also talked about the need for education, and for creating enough awareness that small business owners can have a general idea of what is available, and where they can go to get more information. According to Gopalkrishnan, cloud adoption can add significant value irrespective of where the business is in their growth journey. The first levels of adoption tend to be around payment wallets, point of sale systems, ledgers and messaging platforms. As businesses grow, they begin to need e- commerce and social media solutions for greater outreach to customers. At this stage, they also explore ways to improve internal operational efficiencies and begin to adopt tools that help with HR, compliance, accounting and tax functions. As they become more savvy and their comfort with Cloud grows, they begin to look at analytics and AI, and more evolved solutions. AWS works to make cloud adoption easy for SMBs by focusing on 5 key pillars of accessibility, affordability, flexibility, support and security.
The Indian growth story is a powerful one. Despite worldwide inflation, the Indian juggernaut powers ahead undeterred. Credit for this resilience also goes to the SMB sector which continues to generate great value for the economy and the SMB community in particular. Going forward as Indian SMBs move towards taking their place in global markets, cloud adoption will increase manifold and become more integrated in their ecosystem.
Get more information on the fast changing SME landscape in India and how technology continues to play the role of key accelerator at /digital-bharat/
To enhance the digital capabilities and develop a robust tech-backed infrastructure, Digital Bharat 2.0 will be a support mechanism for enterprises of tomorrow and will create a strong community for them.