Blue Prism launches robotic process automation community in India

UK-based robotic process automation (RPA) software enterprise Blue Prism launched the world's first RPA community targeting global capability centres (GCCs) of multinationals in India, the company said in a media statement.

The announcement comes days after Blue Prism’s competitor and Indian heritage RPA firm Automation Anywhere announced $100 million investment in India.

The London stock exchange-listed Blue Prism will increase investments in India as RPA adoption has soared in the country, home to the world's largest concentration of GCCs.

The online RPA community is meant for stakeholders at the GCCs and aims to provide a forum for members to share information and learn best practices for deploying and scaling Blue Prism technologies, the statement said.

Other competitors in the segment include New York-based UiPath and Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Pega.

India has over 1,250 GCCs, and generated $28.3 billion in value for the financial year ended March 2019, according to a recent study by IT industry lobby Nasscom and technology research and consultancy firm Zinnov.

"GCCs were the first adopters of strategic, enterprise-scale RPA in India as offered by Blue Prism. We believe India’s GCCs will continue to be strong adopters of our connected-RPA platform and make it a cornerstone for their global digital transformation initiatives,” said  Peter Gartenberg, managing director, Blue Prism India.

Blue Prism has established global field operations including customer support, professional services, customer success, academic and sales alliances as well as marketing in India, the statement said.

"The community will not only host separate industry-specific user groups but also facilitate discussions and meet-ups for RPA practitioners, professionals and innovators,” Gartenberg added.

A couple of months ago, Blue Prism, a $1.6 billion enterprise, had acquired Thoughtonomy, which will extend its RPA capabilities on Microsoft Azure while helping out customers in key regions, including India, the statement said. The company has over 1,600 customers globally.

RPA is the fastest-growing software subsegment with year-over-year growth of more than 63% in 2018. Gartner estimates that 60% of organisations with a revenue of more than $1 billion will have deployed RPA tools by the end of the year. By the end of 2022, 85% of large and very large organisations will have deployed some form of RPA, according to Gartner.

The other bigger player in the RPA segment, SoftBank-backed Automation Anywhere, sees India as its second-largest market as GCCs are increasingly buying its software for automating their business processes and operations, chief executive Mihir Shukla told TechCircle.