Large-scale cloud adoption can add 14 mn jobs, $380 bn to GDP by 2026: NASSCOM

Large-scale cloud adoption can contribute $380 billion to India’s GDP as well as add 14 million direct and indirect job opportunities by 2026, said a report. The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) launched a report titled ‘Future of Cloud and Its Economic Impact: Opportunity for India’ that stated that a concerted all-round effort can result in a sustained growth of 25-30 per cent of cloud spending in the next five years to reach $18.5 billion.

The report added that cloud has become a strategic priority and the foundation for successful digital transformation for enterprises, governments and SMBs. India has earmarked numerous activities to build a digitally empowered and inclusive society, it added. 

“Adoption of cloud has the potential to account for ~8 per cent of India’s GDP and can create ~14 million direct and indirect employment opportunities in 2026. At 44 per cent CAGR (2016-2021E), the Indian cloud market has outpaced the global market in terms of growth rate. Factors such as growing digital population, inflow of investments, digitization of enterprises and favourable government policies, are accelerating India’s cloud growth,” the report added. 

While India is still at nascent stages, it added, the shift to cloud has become inevitable since the COVID-19 outbreak. It has helped businesses and the government to accelerate their digital adoption.  Large scale adoption of cloud has the potential to improve citizen services and drive digital inclusion in various areas including healthcare, financial services, and education. 

Cloud adoption can open new opportunities for entrepreneurship in the country. 

Debjani Ghosh, President NASSCOM said, “Cloud adoption brings immense potential across multiple facets like economic growth, digital inclusion, employment, and global technology edge. For India, cloud computing has the potential to transform the Indian economy technologically and make it more resilient and inclusive. However, to ensure large scale adoption of cloud and cloud-based services will require multi-stakeholder collaboration to address mindset challenges and perceptions in cloud adoption, incentivise SMBs to transition to cloud, rapidly scale talent through re-skilling and up-skilling programs and amend cloud related policies to ease cloud deployments."

Rahul Sharma, President, AWS India and South Asia (Amazon Internet Services) WWPS said that cloud computing has proven to be the foundation for digital transformation, technology-led innovation, business growth, and positive social impact at scale in India. 

Some of the drivers of cloud adoption include increased workplace productivity, ability to quickly launch new products and services, better consumer engagement, superior security etc. Cloud based initiatives like MyGov Saathi, Curfew ePass, COVID-19 repository, Aarogya Setu and CoWIN are few examples of the role of cloud by the government. 

However, "limited understanding of cloud features and benefits," "Integration of legacy systems/applications and migration," and "lack of in-house capability to drive transformation” act as barriers for cloud adoption. If businesses and the government are late in cloud adoption, India stands to lose $118 billion in GDP contribution and 5 million job opportunities by 2026.

The NASSCOM report added that stakeholders need to take major initiatives across cloud adoption, talent building and regulatory support. Businesses should focus on internal capability building through training and development initiatives for cloud transformation, it added. The government must encourage cloud adoption in the public sector and its functions. 

Also read: Indian IT on a strong wicket: Nasscom President Krishnan Ramanujam