SAP sees strong multi-cloud adoption in India in 2022 driven by SMBs

German software major SAP expects strong cloud adoption in India in 2022 driven by small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that have accelerated their investments in a multi-cloud strategy. 

“We are the market leader in the SMB sector in India, with over 9,330 mid-market business customers,” Subramanian Ananthapadmanabhan, vice president – Midmarket, SAP Indian Subcontinent, said in an interview. SMEs, he added, account for 80% of SAP India's customer base. 

SAP said its cloud adoption in India grew over 100% during FY21. “Our average deal sizes in the core ERP (enterprise resource planning) space have grown over 2.5x and we expect the momentum to continue well into FY22,” said Ananthapadmanabhan.

In January last year, SAP committed to invest Rs 500 crore in India to localise and accelerate its multi-cloud strategy in the country. “Through our multi-cloud strategy, we aim to enable our customers to receive the benefits of our platform on their choice of cloud infrastructure,” said Ananthapadmanabhan.

SAP’s multi-cloud strategy is being rapidly adopted by SMBs in verticals like the IT-ITeS, life sciences and pharma, retail, and engineering, construction and operations. It is also seeing increased traction from manufacturing companies. Some of the customers who have adopted SAP’s multi-cloud strategy in India include Cera Sanitaryware, Luminous Power, Virescent Infrastructure, Puravankara, and WayCool Foods & Products.  

“With the announcement of the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, we expect the discrete manufacturing sector to significantly outperform,” said Ananthapadmanabhan.

“Like other vendors, SAP has steered its own products in this direction and also made acquisitions that fit with the changing buy-side trends. This has been complemented by changing sales and partner programs like RISE with SAP that has done well to push the agenda for the cloud,” said Sanchit Vir Gogia, CEO and chief analyst, Greyhound Research.  

SAP in India competes with the likes of IBM, Oracle, and Salesforce for a greater share of the client’s wallet. As organizations are forced to invest in digital revenue streams while keeping costs under check, they are looking at cloud-delivered technology resources to add maximum value.