India’s technology transformation opportunities by 2025

“We are living in extraordinary times, when innovators and thinkers across organizations are coming up with ideas to technologically transform services provided to consumers. Such transformations have peaked in the last decade and have resulted in technology driving key business changes across sectors, be it entertainment (Netflix), transportation (Uber) or travel (Airbnb). Technological innovations have become the new normal, as consumers are gradually getting habituated to certain types of tech-transformed services.” – Keshav Murugesh, Group CEO of WNS Global Services & Chairman, NASSCOM.

Technology is growing at lightening speed across sectors in India. With our aspiration to become a USD 5 trillion economy by 2025, technology is destined to play a pivotal role in India’s planned footprint in the global economy. India’s Industry 4.0, expected to be valued at USD 4 trillion by 2020, will lead technological transformation with innovation in areas like blockchain, quantum computing, drone deployment and big data. These will play key roles in delivering advanced services to consumers.

Now let’s examine the possible technology opportunities in a few sectors. In industries like aviation, healthcare and power, the prowess of technology lies in anticipating future requirements as well as in better understanding of consumer needs. But let us begin by exploring the possibility of technology led transformation in an unconventional sector like agriculture.

Agriculture can reap great benefits through technological transformation, as exemplified by Agri10x – a global e-marketplace connecting farmers directly with traders. The company eliminated the influence of middlemen when it came to procurement of produce from farmers, thus ensuring greater profitability for them. It used blockchain to ascertain food security as blockchain helps in justifying the quality and accessibility of food by tracking the produce throughout its journey from sowing to packaging.

India’s healthcare sector has plenty of room for tech innovation. Our country is currently struggling with low patient to doctor ratio, especially now, with the Covid-19 pandemic crisis. Technology can assist doctors considerably in this regard. It can also help in preventing the spread of infection by avoiding direct contact. Utilization of technology might even make the patient feel equal in involvement with the medical process. For the much celebrated Ayushman Bharat scheme, Indian government would need adequate technological support to protect the data it gathers.

Banking and financial services in India has seen huge growth in usage of technology with the surge in popularity of payment wallets, however, more needs to be done here. In the years to come, technology in financial services would only go beyond present developments when there are further innovations in core banking software.

To prepare for this upcoming tech-cum-industrial revolution across sectors, organizations should focus on imparting adequate skilling of workforces. To accelerate the vision of a digital India, the country’s workforce, which is dependent on STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), should incorporate people from the world of arts to alter it into the ‘STEAM’ model and incorporate creative vision in technological evolutions.

During this transformational drive, corporates must pay attention to two key areas – creating data refineries and strengthen start-ups by taking them to the next level in terms of investments, sales and marketing. Businesses must work towards tech innovations that enhance business opportunities, help anticipate future business prospects, enhance reach and customer satisfaction.

Industry leaders must also stress the importance of developing technology that is inclusive, ensuring services reach even those usually perceived to be outside the ambit of technology. Merely investing in technology is not enough, transformation ought to be aligned with clear transitioning and ensure outcomes which would not only be focused on growth of businesses, but also be experience-oriented and human-centric. The wider goal of developing and utilizing technologies should always be to ensure that they play pivotal roles in transforming and improving people’s lives.

[box type=”shadow” align=”” class=”” width=””]Insights for the above article has been taken from ET Tech Summit 2019 – Key address by Keshav Murugesh, Group CEO of WNS Global Services & Chairman, NASSCOM & panel discussion titled ‘India’s technology opportunity by 2025 – Transforming work, empowering people’ moderated by Deepankar Sanwalka, Advisory Leader, PwC India and participated by Alok Nanda, CEO, GE India Technology Centre and CTO, GE South Asia, Pankajj P Ghode, Founder, iCognitive Global Inc and Agri10x, Rohit MA, Co-founder and MD, Cloudnine Group of Hospitals and Arihant Jain, MD (Cards and Payments Technology, India), Barclays.[/box]