Time is ripe for India to take technology leadership in 2022

We will remember 2021 as the year when technology has led mankind from the front. Amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the mankind has not only produced vaccines to cure the disease in a record time, it has also swiftly tapped digital channels to go on with its daily lives. These vital transformations have been possible on the back of leveraging technology. Back home in India, decades of digitalisation have taken place in the last one year alone. Be it a rapid surge in digital payments or mass migration to ecommerce channels, India has seen people and enterprises embracing digitalization in a massive way.

Some data sets will reflect the scale of this shift. India's flagship payments platform, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) touched record highs - both in terms of value and volume of transactions in October 2021. While the volume of transactions crossed 4.2 billion, the value of those digital transactions surpassed the $100-billion mark, creating a landmark moment in the digital payment space. Indian consumers have also moved in droves to ecommerce channels including epharmacy, teleconsultation, edtech, fintech and many more this year. According to data shared by the Indian government, the country constituted 14 per cent of the total 2018 billion app installations in the world in 2020. McKinsey in a report said India is digitising at a faster pace than many matured and emerging economies.

Against this backdrop, all stakeholders have played a crucial role in this technology adoption. Especially, internet startups have a good hand in ensuring this migration. Hearteningly, Indian startups have set another record by raising $30 billion in the 11 months of 2021. The country also saw additions of 42 unicorns (firms valued at more than $1 billion) to take the total number of unicorns to 79 so far. This takes India to be the home of third largest number of unicorns globally.

The $180 billion IT industry benefitted a lot from the surge in digital adoption globally. Though India is yet to contribute significantly to revenues of Indian IT services companies, this pie is certainly growing. Overall, 2021 is a stellar year for Indian IT firms. All large companies are likely to post double-digit revenue growth in the current fiscal year. Many mid-tier companies are having a dream run with top line growth of high teens. Not only established IT firms, the country is also catching up fast in the product space. India is now home to 10 SaaS (software as a service) unicorns with a stellar listing of Freshworks in Nasdaq this year. So, slowly but steadily, India is turning the chapter in the IT product space.

As we are at the verge of approaching the new year, there is no visible sign yet to suggest that this digital tide is going to turn in 2022. Rather, the change seems structural and irreversible. India is all set to roll out 5G network this year. So, the pace of change is certainly going to accelerate further. India is uniquely placed with a significant mass of young population and STEM talent. So, time is ripe for India to take the technology leadsership in the world in 2022.