Public cloud deployments can contribute US$100 billion and 240,000 jobs to the Indian economy by 2023: Google Cloud and BCG report

Google Cloud in collaboration with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) today announced the India findings of a study titled, “Ascent to the Cloud: How Six Key APAC Economies can Lift-off” and finds that the country’s large and fast-growing public cloud market, continues to show enormous potential for rapid growth in public cloud.

Projected to grow at a CAGR of 25% from US$3 billion in 2018 to US$8 billion in 2023, public cloud deployments in India have the potential to contribute approximately US$100 billion in GDP cumulatively from 2019 to 2023. When annualized, this is equivalent to 0.6% of GDP and 15% of the GDP impact of the IT industry and 25% of the textile industry in India – both key industries in India.

Commissioned by Google Cloud and conducted by BCG, the study entailed discussions with experts and senior stakeholders across industry verticals and a survey of 1,000+ IT decision makers across the Asia Pacific region including India. Sectors surveyed included digital native businesses and internet start-ups, banking and financial services, retail, media and gaming, public sector and manufacturing.

Faster time to market a core driver for cloud adoption

India’s digital-native businesses and media and entertainment companies are the biggest drivers of public cloud adoption. Respondents cited faster launch of new products and services, higher team productivity and cloud service providers’ ability to deliver enhanced security as key reasons for adopting cloud computing.

Retail and consumer goods players are also increasingly exploring opportunities to digitize and develop capabilities in artificial intelligence and machine learning enabled by the public cloud.

Rick Harshman, managing director of Google Cloud in Asia Pacific said, “Traditional retailers are expanding into e-commerce to capture digital and omnichannel revenue growth, and they’re turning to the public cloud to help them scale up quickly and handle peak loads during special sales like Diwali. Access to cloud-based smart data analytics solutions also enables our retailer customers to become more customer-centric and data-driven so they can optimize their spend across channels, plan inventory and manage their supply chains.”

The study found that manufacturers and financial institutions on the other hand are still in the early stages of public cloud adoption. This was due in part to the perceived complexity of migrating legacy data and evolving government regulations around data and security. For such organisations, strong security and compliance standards were cited as a deciding factor when choosing between public cloud vendors.

“Cloud providers invest more resources in security than most enterprises put into securing their on-premise environments, and the financial institutions that we work with globally around fraud detection, risk analytics, smart pricing, and personalization rank a better security and compliance environment as a key benefit of adopting public cloud solutions,” he added.

Cultivating cloud-ready talent critical

According to the report, the business efficiencies and growth resulting from public cloud deployments also have the potential to lead to up to 240,000 jobs and impact another 743,000 jobs through second order effects  from 2019 to 2023.

Of the 240,000 direct jobs, around 157,000 will be in digital and technology-related roles such as data scientists, product managers, engineering, design, user experience and infrastructure management jobs with cloud service providers, IT service providers and across industry verticals. Another 83,000 direct roles will be related to core business functions (marketing, finance, operations etc.) across industry verticals.

“We have seen first hand the incredible progress that’s possible when companies and countries embrace a cloud-first future. We’re working with higher education institutions and customers to train cloud-native engineers at an aggressive rate and broadening access to training and certification to help groom a pool of cloud-ready talent to help Indian businesses grow and scale with the cloud,” said Harshman.

Google Cloud’s career readiness program provides students with training, mentorship and certification so they can launch their careers with companies seeking cloud talent.

The company has also launched the Google Cloud Computing Foundations Course on the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) platform. The eight-week course aims to impart knowledge and hands-on training around cloud infrastructure, big data, machine learning and more to students with little to no background or experience in cloud computing.