NASSCOM-EY's survey revealed that 78% of Indian IT companies, 53% of healthcare and BFSI companies and 49% of pharma companies have migrated to the cloud after 2019.IDC's latest report further reinforces these statistics by showing that 40% of Indian organizations will have cloud services exclusively within their service provider's facilities or on-premise implementations by 2024.
Media companies and digital natives are driving cloud adoption in India, with financial institutions, manufacturers, retailers and large enterprises following suit. Moreover, according to Inc 42, more than 20 Indian startups have reached the unicorn stage by 2022, with 80% of them citing PaaS and IaaS as integral to their success. They all come from a wide range of industries including food delivery, transportation, online shopping, m-learning and hotel bookings.
At CloudThat, the cloud can help scale even as other organizations face layoffs and declining customer traffic. The Government of India has also released several cloud initiatives such as MyGov Saathi, Curlew ePass, New Crown Pneumonia Repository and Aarogya Setu to ensure timely delivery of services to citizens.
In fact, CoWIN, an end-to-end vaccination platform built on the AWS cloud, is one of the most successful cloud initiatives in India. According to CoWIN, a milestone of 2.25 million doses of vaccines can be administered in a day in India at a rate of 28,000 doses per minute or 466 doses per second.
India has also set benchmarks for public cloud usage. in 2019, Indian internet streaming service provider Hotstar recorded 25.3 million simultaneous viewers watching a live cricket match and set a global record for viewership of a live program at the time.
The country is one of the fastest-growing public cloud markets in the Asia-Pacific region, with a projected growth rate of 25% from 2018 to 2023 and a growth value of $6 billion, according to an analysis by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
The power of cloud in the Indian economy
Although India is in its infancy when it comes to cloud adoption, cloud computing has proven to be the foundation for technology-led innovatization, digital transformation and massive business growth in the Indian economy.
According to a NASSCOM report, the Indian cloud market is growing at a CAGR of 44%, which is outpacing the global market. This growth is attributed to four factors - growth in digital population, digitization of enterprises, inflow of investments and favorable government policies. Further, IDC expects the Indian public cloud market to reach $10.8 billion by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 24.1%.
According to a report by NASSCOM, large-scale cloud adoption has the potential to contribute $380 billion to India's GDP and create 14 million jobs by 2026, a three-fold growth rate. Moreover, an all-encompassing effort could increase the country's cloud spending by 25-30% over the next five years.
AWS' investment in the Indian economy realizes this growth possibility. The new AWS Hyderabad region is expected to support more than 48,000 full-time jobs per year by 2030 through an investment of Rs. 36,300 crore. In addition, the Government of India and private companies such as Dr. Reddy's Labs, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank and Tata Elxsi are innovating on AWS.
These initiatives could create new entrepreneurial opportunities in India, stimulate companies to boost R&D, improve commercial offerings, and contribute to the country's global innovation index. The cloud also has the potential to radically improve citizen services and have a positive social impact on the Indian economy.
By continuing these efforts, India can position itself as a global hub for cloud talent and cloud services.
Some Barriers to Cloud Adoption in Indian Businesses
Whether through Aadhar, UPI or e-governance, India has been at the forefront of setting an example for the digital revolution. Now, with the advent of 'Digital India', the maturity of cloud technology is critical for the government and enterprises to leapfrog another wave of digital transformation.
However, large-scale adoption of cloud and cloud-based services will require multi-party collaboration to address the perceived barriers to adoption. The biggest challenge in India is the quality of teaching and learning. There are many persistent gaps in the curriculum offered by Indian institutions and the skills required for the cloud job market.
The pace of cloud adoption by Indian organizations is hampered by security and data governance on one hand and another major hurdle is regulatory compliance, especially in highly regulated markets and industries.
With global players flocking to systems such as IoT, robotic automation and 3D printing, these barriers could lead to Indian industry being at a disadvantage when it comes to cloud computing. In order to realize the full potential of cloud at the national level, there is an urgent need for relevant stakeholders to take major initiatives in talent building, regulatory support and cloud adoption.