Megatrends will create high-impact opportunities at an unprecedented scale through digital ecosystems: Prasad Rai, Oracle India
With a strong focus on growth, the goals of today’s industry leaders involve creating long-term value for all stakeholders. Businesses are realigning their risk radars and recalibrating their investment strategies for today’s disruptive environment brought about by the rapidly evolving social, economic, environmental, and technological trends in the marketplace. These ‘Megatrends’ are now shaping society and businesses alike, and possess the propensity for altering the economic fabric of India in the decade to come.
These ‘Megatrends’ are projected to serve the consumers as well as the producers by ensuring there is uptake in the opportunities for both. Increasing use of these megatrends will create an ecosystem of innovation that incorporate composable applications, hyper-automation, cloud-Native platforms, decision intelligence, AI Engineering, etc. These trends will redefine the agendas of CEOs and will enable them to effectively steer their businesses, transform the culture of work and change the rules in keeping with the prevailing business environment.
Prasad Rai, Vice President, Strategic Clients Group, Oracle India, shares his perspectives on the potential drivers of these megatrends, their impact, and how cloud technology has become the foundation for businesses to successfully implement these megatrends
Some edited excerpts:
What are the key trends that will shape society and businesses alike in this digital-driven ecosystem? The world has entered the digital era, and all of our processes, from a simple purchase at a grocery store to entire banking operations, rely heavily on digital tools and platforms. Digitization has forever altered the way businesses function these days and has stirred up the entire functioning of society as a whole over the last few years. Businesses are increasingly realigning their risk radars and recalibrating their investment strategies for today’s disruptive environment brought by the rapidly evolving social, economic, environmental, and technological trends in the marketplace.
Keeping these factors in mind, we foresee certain megatrends driven by changing market dynamics and customer needs which possess the propensity for altering the economic fabric of India in the decade to come. Some of these overarching Megatrends that could propel India forward in terms of growth opportunities are a Data-led economy, Asian economic prominence with the rapid expansion of the startup ecosystem, Embedded Finance, Disruptive future of work driving a complete overhaul of employee engagement policies, and hyper personalization backed by mass-urbanization. In addition to this, the proliferation of 5G will also drive various alterations within the industries.
According to Frost & Sullivan, APAC 5G revenue is expected to grow from $2.13 billion in 2020 to $23.89 billion in 2025, at a CAGR of 62.2%. This exponential growth will be largely driven by 5G connectivity and improved performance over 4G. It is quite evident that we are seeing a plethora of industry-wide evolutions and ‘Megatrends’ will drive the future of our businesses across the public and private sectors promoting all stakeholders to adopt new practices.
These ‘Megatrends’ are projected to serve the consumers as well as the contributors by ensuring there is uptake in the opportunities for both. These megatrends are expected to create an ecosystem of innovation that incorporate composable applications, hyper-automation, cloud-native platforms, decision intelligence, AI Engineering, etc. To understand these priorities, organisations are relying heavily on technology partners like Oracle and they are serving as facilitators for businesses to adopt and implement these trends by providing strategic solutions that fundamentally enhance and optimise the business processes. We are at the forefront of helping our customers amid disruptions by providing support to drive continuous innovation that helps in evolving the dynamics of the business and increasing their standard. Various businesses across economic sectors depend heavily on Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications to help them build scalable, agile and efficient business processes amid all the industry disruptions and driving these ‘Megatrends’.
What are your views on India’s role in the start-up ecosystem and how it’s adding to overall Asia’s growth? Also, particularly how do you see Oracle catering to start-ups through its cloud-based solutions and technology that suits their needs?
India’s start-up community is expanding day by day with new entrants and young entrepreneurs mushrooming with their unique business ideas and giving a fresh outlook to work primarily in technology-driven business models. As per government statistics, today India has the third largest startup ecosystem in the world and is expected to witness a consistent year-on-year growth of 12-15%, predicted annually. Currently, there were about 50,000 startups in India in 2018 out of which around 8,900 – 9,300 of these are technology-led startups.
In 2019 alone, over 1300 new tech startups were born implying that 2 to 3 tech startups enter the industry every day. With the increase in digital adoption and new advanced technologies making businesses innovative, we strongly believe that this startup boom is going to penetrate even more markets in the coming years. The Indian market is perceived as being capable of offering an abundance of opportunities for startups owing to its growing market potential and consumption. On an industry level, the expansion of startup ecosystem can foster innovation, and accelerated growth of various sectors. On a macroeconomic level, the growth of the startup ecosystem will also fuel the economic growth of the Asian region as it spreads to neighboring regions via the chain effect.
To create a scalable impact, technology plays an essential role in shaping up the startup ecosystem as it allows budding entrepreneurs to follow the rule book of innovative and deliver up-to-date data. Startups function in a highly dynamic and fierce competitive environment and hence are relying on the expertise of smart IT solutions to sustain and thrive.
Oracle is aiding the development of startup ecosystem by offering them unique cloud-based solutions and technology as per their highly dynamic business requirements. With over 40 years of enterprise experience, we are committed to give startups a chance to bloom with the right use of technology. We have introduced the Oracle Startup Program to create a virtuous cycle of innovation by blending startup ingenuity with enterprise resources to deliver transformative solutions to customers. As part of this program, startups can easily accelerate their growth with free cloud and support from experienced product teams. Apart from that, we enable startups to scale up their business by engagement and co-selling with Oracle’s global customer base providing a path to revenue.
Do you think that the adoption of cloud technology is supporting organisations across sectors largely to meet their digital vision? If yes, what are some of the key trends that organisations are looking at in driving their digital agenda? To that, what role does cloud technology play in driving these megatrends?
The pandemic has almost made digital transformation a necessity rather than a preference for businesses. The recent technological disruptions have given rise to many industry trends, while many industry trends have given rise to technological advancement. Hence, both are interdependent and complementary to each other and technology players display an instrumental role in assisting organisations in embracing these megatrends. On a broader scale, the megatrends will create high-impact opportunities at an unprecedented scale through ecosystems built on a strong foundation of digital technologies including the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), automation with Cloud Computing being the most prominent one.
To transform their business digitally, organisations need to implement the right means and right technologies to accumulate, understand, analyse and implement data to unleash its true potential. Here Cloud computing is serving as the right tool serving as the foundation for leveraging data as an asset and cloud providers like Oracle are assisting businesses in becoming more effective and agile. The consolidation of cloud and analytics could assist businesses in storing, interpreting, and processing their data to better meet the needs of their clients. Cloud based technologies are essentially serving as a catalyst to establish sustainable business frameworks that are strategic in nature and heavily rely on data-led insights.
Technology adoption and implementation of smart technologies have essentially become a boardroom discussion for CIOs and CEOs as part of key business decisions as companies adopt to the digital era. The increased Cloud adoption has given wings to many businesses in shaping up their internal processes digitally and playing a key role in driving these megatrends. With cloud players developing capabilities to embed financial services as part of solutions and offerings alongside other smart technologies, cloud has become an important enabler of Embedded Finance adoption. Additionally, hyper-personalization is being facilitated by technologies like Cloud and AI to understand the needs of customers and help marketers and retailers in serving them accordingly in a personalized manner.
What are your views on the future of Data led economy? How important is it for Indian businesses to embrace the right use of data and at the same time become highly secured and align their business processes in the wave of digital transformation?
With the global move to a data-driven economy, which alters the traditional operational process across industries, data is increasingly becoming the engine of corporate growth. While data has emerged as key asset to organizations, the onus lies on organizations to implement a data-driven approach along with cutting-edge technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Data Analytics, Blockchain and Cloud. For instance, with the integration of smart technologies, businesses can easily discover new customer clusters and gather their genuine demand using data to investigate patterns. This also enables them to assess their operational risks to anticipate any disruptions and modify their path more quickly.
India is one of the largest and fastest-growing digital consumer markets, with over 500 million internet users, more and more users are being connected to the digital ecosystem every day. Keeping the trends into consideration, it is highly crucial for Indian businesses to embrace the right use of data and at the same time become highly secure and align their business processes in the wave of digital transformation. Owing to the disruptive environment created by the marketplace’s fast evolving social, economic, environmental, and technological trends, businesses are re-evaluating their investment strategies and leaning more towards strategic policy making. Subsequently, the objectives of business leaders in present times include generating long-term value for all stakeholders while maintaining a strong focus on growth. These industry trends are now reshaping both society and industry, and they have the potential to change India’s economic structure in the coming years.
Organisations in sectors such as IT/ITES, BFSI, Heathcare and pharma, E-commerce, Retail, Manufacturing, and others are heavily investing in smart technologies to integrate data into their business processes. Oracle, for example, works with a variety of organisations, including Safexpress, IndiaFirst Life Insurance, HDFC ERGO, Apollo Tyres, SBI Card, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Quess Corp, Apollo Hospitals, SBI General Insurance, Indira IVF, and many others, to integrate data into their core processes, which ranges from HR functions to financial management to supply chain management.
The embedding of a FinTech arm within a non-financial service has slowly started taking up the trend as the global embedded finance market is going to witness a multi-fold growth, do you think that Digital banking is aligned to this megatrend and be able to drive financial inclusion in our country?
The latest wave of disruption in FinTech is ‘Embedded Finance’ which in simple words is the integration of financial services or technology within traditionally non-financial services, products, or technology. With embedded finance, businesses can integrate financial services like EMI, pay later and loan options onto their platforms without having to go through a traditional bank. Embedded finance is a fast-growing trend that many companies are implementing within their own platforms and solutions. By 2025, the value of the global embedded finance market is predicted to generate $230 billion in revenue, more than ten times the $22.5 billion forecast for 2020. It is actually a part of digital banking transformations undertaken by several banks and companies are shifting towards this owing to the ease of business it provides.
Embedded finance is facilitating a global shift to a much more integrated and efficient financial transaction framework and is projected to promote financial inclusion for millions of Indians while generating long-term benefits in the coming years. Digital banking is not only aligned with, but also a key enabler of ‘Embedded Finance’ adoption. As banks transitioned from traditional banking operations to digital ones that were all integrated and connected via their mobile or iPads or laptop devices, they essentially developed an understanding of the convenience that digital provides. This, in conjunction with businesses’ efforts to reach millions of customers across geographical boundaries, gave rise to the embedded finance requirements. For example, in today’s world, most e-commerce platforms use the embedded finance capabilities built into their platforms to provide ‘one-click’ accessibility to their customers.
Oracle believes the future banking will be delivered and seamlessly integrated into the customer business process allowing banks to provide completely new experiences We have a leading position in the banking space and our approach is to enables banks to provide a personalized, digital-banking experience—with seamless payments, collections, holistic working-capital management recommendations, and virtual account management—built on a modern, data-rich cloud foundation that is delivered seamlessly inside corporates’ ERP systems.
What is making employees shift their priorities today, and can technology help them get that satisfaction they are looking for?
The global pandemic brought in unprecedented changes and altered the way the world has functioned. No one could have predicted the immense challenge the pandemic brought about in terms of health and economic crisis completely changing The employee priorities have also shifted drastically and the global and Indian workforce are looking for a balanced work-life balance, focusing on aspects like mental health, organizational culture, and personal well-being have gained prominence today amongst the workforce over mere compensation. Our recent AI@Work study also indicate that workforce priorities have changed dramatically in the past year. Around 96% of the Indian respondents said the meaning of “success” has changed for them ever since the pandemic and suggested that success is now more aligned with prioritizing mental health, achieving work-life balance, and having flexibility on when and where they work.
Remote working has definitely led employees and employers to crave new technology today. Technology can open up opportunities for workers to be more productive at tasks, gain more flexibility between their work and personal lives, and form better working relationships. Organisations too can then increase employee retention and engagement levels and technology-driven productivity growth can have a favorable effect on employees’ personal lives as well, leading to happier workforces. Bharti Airtel is a front-runner when it comes to implementing cutting-edge technologies and this progressive approach has helped them in having a strong footprint in the telecom market. The telecom giant has been using HCM Cloud for a few years and have been successfully streamlining, integrating & centralising the HR system using Oracle cloud. Also, they are able to integrate their internal systems across performance and reward.
Oracle, as a key player in the cloud HR tech domain, caters to a diverse range of organisations through our Human Capital Management solutions and their embedded capabilities addressing hiring, talent management, skill enhancement, employee centricity, and many other core HR operations. Keeping the changing employee priorities and the need for technology solutions that support the overall employee growth we have launched several HR solutions, including Oracle ME, Dynamic Skills and Talent Marketplace, as part of our HCM solutions in recent years, with employee centricity at the core of all these solutions.
