Nasscom says Cloud adoption can create 14 million jobs, add $380 billion to India's GDP by 2026

Large-scale adoption of Cloud has the potential to contribute $380 billion to the country's gross domestic product (GDP), creating 14 million direct and indirect employment opportunities by 2026, a Nasscom report showed on Wednesday.

However, India may lose $118 billion in GDP contribution and five million job opportunities by 2026 if businesses and government are late to Cloud adoption, the report warned.

With global players heading towards new systems like 3D printing, IoT, robotic automation, slow or low adoption in Cloud may result in Indian industries losing competitive edge and India may lose its attractiveness among investors, expats and new businesses.

According to the report, titled 'Future of Cloud and Its Economic Impact: Opportunity for India,' an all-round effort can result in a sustained growth of 25-30 per cent of Cloud spending over the next five years.

"To ensure large-scale adoption of Cloud and Cloud-based services will require multi-stakeholder collaboration to address mindset challenges and perceptions in cloud adoption, incentivise SMBs to transition to Cloud, scale talent through re-skilling and up-skilling and amend Cloud-related policies to ease deployments," explained Debjani Ghosh, President, Nasscom.

At the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 44 per cent, the Indian cloud market has outpaced global market in terms of growth rate, owing to a growing digital population, inflow of investments, digitisation of enterprises and favorable government policies, are accelerating India's cloud growth.

Although India is still at the nascent stages of cloud adoption compared to mature markets, the shift to cloud has become inevitable since the pandemic and is playing a pivotal role in helping Indian businesses and government accelerate their digital transformation journey through infrastructure, platform, and software solutions, said the report.

Large-scale cloud adoption has the potential to fundamentally improve citizen services and drive digital inclusion in areas of healthcare, access to financial services and democratize education for all.

It can also stimulate innovation and open new opportunities for entrepreneurship in India, while at the same time help companies build improved commercial products, promote R&D, and contribute to India's Global Innovation Index.

"Cloud computing has proven to be the foundation for digital transformation, technology-led innovation, business growth, and positive social impact at scale in India," said Rahul Sharma, President, AWS India and South Asia (Amazon Internet Services) WWPS.

Cloud-based initiatives like MyGov Saathi, Curfew ePass, Covid-19 repository, Aarogya Setu and CoWIN are few examples of the role of Cloud in enabling timely launch of citizen services among government.