Microsoft Bets Big On India's Digital Transformation

Microsoft is extremely bullish about India’s digital transformation. So much so that Microsoft, in a joint study with IDC Asia/Pacific, suggested that digital transformation will add nearly $154 billion to India’s GDP by 2021. This will reflect a growth rate of 1 per cent per annum.

 

The Microsoft-IDC joint study on unlocking the economic impact of digital transformation in Asia Pacific said that there would be a phenomenal acceleration in the pace of digital transformation in India, in particular and in Asia Pacific, as a whole. Interestingly, going by the study findings, nearly 4 per cent of India’s GDP was derived from digital products and services created directly through the use of digital technologies, such as mobility, cloud, Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI) in 2017.

 

Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India, said that there are ample indications that India is on the digital transformation fast track. If things move the way it is being envisaged, as much as 60 per cent of India’s GDP would have a strong connection to the digital transformation trends over the next four years or so. This is reflected in the fact that various organisations are increasingly embracing and adopting emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), which in turn is expected to foster digital transformation-led growth further.

 

The Microsoft-IDC study was conducted over 1,560 business decision makers in mid and large-sized organizations across 15 economies in the region. It pointed out that the impact and widespread disruption caused by the digital transformation on traditional business models have been very fast. It has also identified five key benefits from digital transformation.

 

Interestingly, organisations surveyed were learnt to be seeing significant and tangible improvements from their digital transformation efforts across these benefits. The tangible improvements would be in the range of 11 per cent to 14 per cent, at present. Business leaders had said that they were expecting to see more than 40 per cent improvements in those key areas by 2020. And the biggest jump is expected in productivity, customer advocacy as well as profit margin.

While 90 per cent of organisations in India are in the midst of their digital transformation journey, only 7 per cent in the entire region can be classified as Leaders. Mind you that these are organizations, who either already have full digital transformation strategies or are progressing well in this direction, with at least a third of their revenue derived from digital products and services. Besides, these companies are seeing between 20 per cent and 30 per cent improvements in benefits across various business areas from their initiatives, the study indicated. It further pointed out that ‘Leaders’ in this definition experience double the benefits of ‘Followers’. And one will be in a position to clearly make that out by 2020. Almost half of Leaders (48 per cent) have a full digital transformation strategy in place.