India to lose $118 bn in GDP, 5 mn jobs by 2026 if it lags in cloud adoption: Nasscom

India may stand to lose $118 billion in GDP contribution and five million job opportunities by 2026, if businesses and government are late to cloud adoption, said industry body Nasscom in a recent report.

The newly launched report titled: “Future of Cloud and Its Economic Impact: Opportunity for India”, said that limited understanding of cloud features and benefits, integration issues with legacy systems and lack of in-house capability to drive transformation across industries, are posing serious threats to cloud adoption.

Further, with global players heading towards new cloud-based systems like 3D printing, IoT, Robotic automation, slow or low adoption, and more, may result in Indian industries losing competitive edge and in turn India losing its attractiveness among investors, expats and new businesses.

If they can overcome these challenges, there’s a huge potential ahead, said Nasscom. Large scale Cloud adoption can contribute $380 billion to India’s GDP and add 14 million direct and indirect employment opportunities by 2026, it said.

Nasscom leaders also stressed that a concerted all-round effort can result in a sustained growth of 25-30% of cloud spending over the next five years to reach $18.5 billion. Moreover, with increased digital transformation initiatives across enterprises, governments and SMBs today, adoption of cloud has the potential to account for over 8% of India’s GDP in the next five years.

On the positive side, the Indian cloud market has outpaced global market in terms of growth rate. Factors such as growing digital population, inflow of investments, digitisation of enterprises and favourable government policies, are accelerating India’s cloud growth.

“Cloud adoption brings immense potential across multiple facets like economic growth, digital inclusion, employment, and global technology edge,” said Debjani Ghosh, President, Nasscom.

However, she added that to ensure large scale adoption of cloud and cloud-based services, multi-stakeholder collaboration to address mindset challenges and perceptions in cloud adoption are essential. 

Ghosh also stressed on “incentivising SMBs to transition to cloud, rapidly scaling talent through re-skilling and up-skilling programs and amending cloud related policies to ease cloud deployments” for India to gain a competitive edge in cloud.

The report further recommended that for India to position itself as a global hub for cloud services and cloud talent, stakeholders need to take major initiatives across cloud adoption, talent building and regulatory support.