Technology innovations will define India’s business landscape in 2023
In today’s digital era, technology is continually evolving, offering radical new growth opportunities for businesses to innovate, re-invent, and open new vistas to create and contribute to humanity’s well-being. Covid-19 has created a complex, multifaceted technology landscape that has not only accelerated the demand for digital innovation but has also challenged advanced manufacturing facilities. India, over the years, has made incredible strides in technology and the digital economy. From the development of cutting-edge AI capabilities to adoption of digital payments, 5G to high-performance computing, India has proven itself to be one of the most innovative nations in the world. In fact, India’s current digital transformation (DX) adoption landscape has been rapidly evolving, with DX spending projected to scale to USD $23.6 billion in 2025 at a CAGR of 17 percent. Moreover, with a paradigm shift in businesses’ long-term strategic digital and resilience goals, DX technology investments are also expected to further accelerate.
In 2023, we expect to see five major tech trends that will define India’s growth and resilience.
Embracing Digital Transformation
India's feverish pace of adopting technology into all matters has it poised on the very cusp of digital transformation. Over the last few years, we've seen many paper-bound processes get transformed into simpler, digital processes. The “India Stack” is a game changer and a unique advantage for us. UPI took India from a paper-currency driven market to one that's synonymous with digital payments. DigiLocker is a great example of how, through technology, citizens now no longer need to carry cards and papers, but are instead served by a singular app that can securely house all their government records such as driver's license, vaccination records, educational certificates and more. In-person meetings are moving towards video calls as more and more of the workforce continues to work from home. given this environment, Indian businesses are poised to make significant investments towards digital transformation and IT modernization. According to the latest report by IDC, more than 95 percent of the IT decision makers in India reported that their organization plans to spend more than what they spent in 2021 on digital transformation initiatives, with the spending in India expected to reach $85 Billion by 2026. Our customers are digital and in turn businesses need to be more digital to cater to them!
AI to drive the next wave of business growth
AI is no longer just a buzzword. By 2023, AI is expected to define commercial applications and internal business optimization tools across a multitude of industries. In point of fact, AI adoption is expected to add $500 billion to India’s GDP by 2025, and therefore, businesses would need to focus on scouting ways to optimize processes, enhance productivity, and bridge the existing skill gaps. Organizations will now need to realize how AI can be utilized to support informed decision-making about not just near-term decisions, but also their future business paths. AI has shown that it has the potential to solve many of the problems that exist in the world, but for businesses, it offers a key benefit; optimization. For example, as the manufacturing industry in India continues to expand, AI could offer key insights into managing supply, production methodology and even inventory management resulting in reduced operating costs. With a digital audience in country, we have so much data that is and will be created, that it makes for a massive AI opportunity ahead of us!
Digital Infrastructure will power the Economy
India also happens to enjoy some of the lowest mobile data rates in the world, allowing for the country to bring a huge chunk of the previously untapped population online. This collective, while enjoying some of the lowest data rates in the world, also happens to generate the second highest amounts of data in the world, unlocking India's massive data-center potential. For context, India has 20 percent of the world's internet users, but the country accounts for only 2 percent of the world's servers. Consider the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which crossed 7.8 billion transactions in December of 2022, as per the data shared by the National Payments Corporation of India (NCPI). Clearly, technology has started to weave itself into the very fabric of the economic progress, so growing the country's server capacity is not only important, but imminent. Data center growth will play a critical role in India's goal to double its GDP and become a trillion-dollar digital economy.
Building a Hyperconnected and Intelligent World
The accelerating speed of digital disruption has forever changed the dynamics of business – creating new business models, revenue streams, and digital ecosystems in this digital world. In 2023, the emphasis on harnessing the power of the Internet of Things (IoT), 5G, and Edge Computing will continue to be felt strongly. IoT has the potential to radically alter how companies evaluate and think about operations, product development, and design physical space – all things that impact the bottom line. By 2023, it is projected that over 43 billion devices will be connected to the internet, and with digital twins on the horizon, digital replicas of real things will soon become commonplace.
5G will be a game-changer for India, and with its recent deployment, it is expected to build a market of 31 million 5G users by end of 2022. As per Ericsson, the 5G enabled digitalization is slated to become a $17 billion opportunity by 2030. Therefore, India will be in a strategic position to boost its digital economy, enable advanced infrastructure, reap benefits from enhanced access to education, and healthcare, and seamless processes to transform businesses. Lastly, edge computing will make up more than 50 percent of new enterprise IT infrastructures deployed by enterprises.
Smartphone and PCs will shape the Connected World
While smartphones continued their steady growth in India for the last decade, the pandemic showed us that the PC continued to be a critical tool for consumers and businesses. As everyone moved to a work from home model, demand of laptops, desktops and monitors skyrocketed proving that the PC still is a device of choice to be productive. The demand signals may be cyclic but the net trajectory of these devices being an integral part of our growth story is clear. The education sector has also embraced digital learning in a big way across the country, with the government launching multiple programs across all levels of academia to facilitate hybrid learning. Gaming continues to show strong growth across the board, with a forecasted CAGR of 29 percent to 1.19 billion dollars in FY 2025. While there may be some headwinds faced by smartphone and PC industry in the coming months, the associated industries such as software, entertainment, cloud, web3, education, and even AR/VR are seeing a large uptick in consumption, pointing towards a positive outlook for the future.
Advanced digital technologies are coming your way. Many of these trends are already making their way to the business realm, and these will not be just your standard upgrades that will bring forth new and unexpected ways of conducting business. As 2023 begins, businesses must navigate this changing landscape while scaling innovations, and gaining a better understanding of how technology will continue to accelerate digital transformation across industries, as we set out on what will be an exciting new era.
By Santhosh Viswanathan, Managing Director, and Vice President – Sales Marketing & Communications Group, Intel India
In 2023, we expect to see five major tech trends that will define India’s growth and resilience.
Embracing Digital Transformation
India's feverish pace of adopting technology into all matters has it poised on the very cusp of digital transformation. Over the last few years, we've seen many paper-bound processes get transformed into simpler, digital processes. The “India Stack” is a game changer and a unique advantage for us. UPI took India from a paper-currency driven market to one that's synonymous with digital payments. DigiLocker is a great example of how, through technology, citizens now no longer need to carry cards and papers, but are instead served by a singular app that can securely house all their government records such as driver's license, vaccination records, educational certificates and more. In-person meetings are moving towards video calls as more and more of the workforce continues to work from home. given this environment, Indian businesses are poised to make significant investments towards digital transformation and IT modernization. According to the latest report by IDC, more than 95 percent of the IT decision makers in India reported that their organization plans to spend more than what they spent in 2021 on digital transformation initiatives, with the spending in India expected to reach $85 Billion by 2026. Our customers are digital and in turn businesses need to be more digital to cater to them!
AI to drive the next wave of business growth
AI is no longer just a buzzword. By 2023, AI is expected to define commercial applications and internal business optimization tools across a multitude of industries. In point of fact, AI adoption is expected to add $500 billion to India’s GDP by 2025, and therefore, businesses would need to focus on scouting ways to optimize processes, enhance productivity, and bridge the existing skill gaps. Organizations will now need to realize how AI can be utilized to support informed decision-making about not just near-term decisions, but also their future business paths. AI has shown that it has the potential to solve many of the problems that exist in the world, but for businesses, it offers a key benefit; optimization. For example, as the manufacturing industry in India continues to expand, AI could offer key insights into managing supply, production methodology and even inventory management resulting in reduced operating costs. With a digital audience in country, we have so much data that is and will be created, that it makes for a massive AI opportunity ahead of us!
Digital Infrastructure will power the Economy
India also happens to enjoy some of the lowest mobile data rates in the world, allowing for the country to bring a huge chunk of the previously untapped population online. This collective, while enjoying some of the lowest data rates in the world, also happens to generate the second highest amounts of data in the world, unlocking India's massive data-center potential. For context, India has 20 percent of the world's internet users, but the country accounts for only 2 percent of the world's servers. Consider the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which crossed 7.8 billion transactions in December of 2022, as per the data shared by the National Payments Corporation of India (NCPI). Clearly, technology has started to weave itself into the very fabric of the economic progress, so growing the country's server capacity is not only important, but imminent. Data center growth will play a critical role in India's goal to double its GDP and become a trillion-dollar digital economy.
Building a Hyperconnected and Intelligent World
The accelerating speed of digital disruption has forever changed the dynamics of business – creating new business models, revenue streams, and digital ecosystems in this digital world. In 2023, the emphasis on harnessing the power of the Internet of Things (IoT), 5G, and Edge Computing will continue to be felt strongly. IoT has the potential to radically alter how companies evaluate and think about operations, product development, and design physical space – all things that impact the bottom line. By 2023, it is projected that over 43 billion devices will be connected to the internet, and with digital twins on the horizon, digital replicas of real things will soon become commonplace.
5G will be a game-changer for India, and with its recent deployment, it is expected to build a market of 31 million 5G users by end of 2022. As per Ericsson, the 5G enabled digitalization is slated to become a $17 billion opportunity by 2030. Therefore, India will be in a strategic position to boost its digital economy, enable advanced infrastructure, reap benefits from enhanced access to education, and healthcare, and seamless processes to transform businesses. Lastly, edge computing will make up more than 50 percent of new enterprise IT infrastructures deployed by enterprises.
Smartphone and PCs will shape the Connected World
While smartphones continued their steady growth in India for the last decade, the pandemic showed us that the PC continued to be a critical tool for consumers and businesses. As everyone moved to a work from home model, demand of laptops, desktops and monitors skyrocketed proving that the PC still is a device of choice to be productive. The demand signals may be cyclic but the net trajectory of these devices being an integral part of our growth story is clear. The education sector has also embraced digital learning in a big way across the country, with the government launching multiple programs across all levels of academia to facilitate hybrid learning. Gaming continues to show strong growth across the board, with a forecasted CAGR of 29 percent to 1.19 billion dollars in FY 2025. While there may be some headwinds faced by smartphone and PC industry in the coming months, the associated industries such as software, entertainment, cloud, web3, education, and even AR/VR are seeing a large uptick in consumption, pointing towards a positive outlook for the future.
Advanced digital technologies are coming your way. Many of these trends are already making their way to the business realm, and these will not be just your standard upgrades that will bring forth new and unexpected ways of conducting business. As 2023 begins, businesses must navigate this changing landscape while scaling innovations, and gaining a better understanding of how technology will continue to accelerate digital transformation across industries, as we set out on what will be an exciting new era.
By Santhosh Viswanathan, Managing Director, and Vice President – Sales Marketing & Communications Group, Intel India
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