IT spending in Indian companies projected to $112.2 bn: Report

The information technology spending in India for 2023 to be projected to a total of $112.2 billion. While Indian chief information officers (CIOs) will remain cautious, they would continue spending on customer experience and employee productivity; this will drive a 14.6% annual growth in enterprise software spending, shows the latest Gartner forecast.

Worldwide, the IT spending is projected to be $4.7 trillion in 2023, up 4.3% from 2022.

Notably, CIOs are expected to shift spending on automation as companies continue to lose competition for talent, the report added.

In India too, talent shortages would be a major concern, in turn driving 8% annual growth in IT services spending in the country.

"Digital business transformations are beginning to morph,” said John-David Lovelock, distinguished vice president analyst at Gartner. “IT projects are shifting from a focus on external facing deliverables such as revenue and customer experience, to more inward facing efforts focused on optimisation.”

Gartner's January showcased a projected growth of 0.5% year-on-year to a total of $110.3 billion in 2023 in IT spending.

The report also stated that while generative artificial intelligence seems to be the flavour of the season, it may not significantly impact IT spending levels. That said, in longer term generative AI will be incorporated into enterprises through existing spending.

“Generative AI’s best channel to market is through the software, hardware and services that organisations are already using,” said Lovelock. “Every year, new features are added to tech products and services as add-ons or upgrades. Most enterprises will incorporate generative AI in a slow and controlled manner through upgrades to tools that are already built into IT budgets.”

The FY24Q1 results announcements kicked off last week. Companies like Tata Consultancy, HCL Technologies, and Wipro have reported investments in generative AI.

HCL reiterated its focus on artificial intelligence (AI), more particularly on generative AI.

The company is reported to have more than 70 projects at various stages from proof of concept to implementation. The projects cover domains such as education, applications, system and product engineering, infrastructure and operations, and HCLSoftware products. The company is also training more than 20,000 employees on generative AI capabilities. HCL has launched generative AI labs in three locations globally.

Similarly, Wipro announced the launch of end to end AI called ai360 along with $1 billion investment over three years.