We are at the cusp of an economic revolution

India has exhibited its prowess as being one of the most innovative nations worldwide with several initiatives during and after the pandemic, says Shailender Kumar, SVP and Regional Managing Director, Oracle India and NetSuite Asia Pacific and Japan.

What are your thoughts on techceleration (technological acceleration) that took place during the pandemic, and India being on a path to becoming a tech and economic superpower by 2047?

We live in a ‘techade’, and the world is watching how India is pacing ahead with its digital transformation. During the pandemic, we were faced with an economic and humanitarian crisis that seemed unimaginable. It made us realize the extreme importance of embracing technology, quickly – for smooth functioning of business and general well-being. Today, we are at the cusp of an economic revolution – look at the pace and scale at which digitization is moving ahead in India. Among the world’s nations, India has emerged as a growing economy. Technology is continuously evolving, and that offers radically new growth opportunities for businesses to re-invent. This directly impacts and contributes to economic development.

India has exhibited its prowess as being one of the most innovative nations worldwide with several initiatives eg. the development of cutting-edge technologies like AI, the CoWIN platform, the launch of electric vehicles, aspirational districts programme, rapid adoption of digital payments, national e-learning platform, 5G and much more. Additionally, businesses have started to enhance digitization of their internal processes and supply chains by three to four years. India’s digital transformation (DX) adoption landscape has been rapidly evolving, with DX spending projected to scale to US$23.6 billion in 2025 at a CAGR of 17 percent as per IDC. The dramatic pace at which businesses adopt technologies affects our economy, society, and culture. India is moving on the right path to advance its technical and economic superiority—the growth of startups and development of new technologies have been key enablers. With such high penetration of technology, our country is making the average Indian an integral part of the digital economy, and this is becoming the norm for everything, from doctor consultations to food delivery to education and more. Our country is projected to become the third-largest economy in the world in 2027— pegged at US$5 trillion—overtaking Germany and Japan.

The consensus is that by 2025, humans will have a more connected relationship with technology as more people rely on digital connections for daily activities like jobs, education, healthcare, and critical social contacts.

Shed your insights on the rapid cloud adoption by both large enterprises and SMBs along with the Government and BFSI.

Oracle is a comprehensive cloud player in the Indian market with decades of experience in servicing public sector organisations and companies operating in regulated industries like banking and financial industry. We have collaborated with various government organizations and banks or financial institutions over the past three decades. For governments, our primary goal has been to serve as a technology enabler at the local and central levels in order to assist their wider goal of fostering development and satisfying citizens. For BFSI customers, we are focused towards helping them deliver world-class customer experiences that build loyalty and drive growth. We help them to rapidly respond to what their customers need and improve their business operations with our data-driven applications and cloud services.

Our collaboration on projects ranging from healthcare to urban development to logistics and commerce. One such project was a smart government initiative—the Aspirational Districts Programme. In the healthcare and pharma sphere, we successfully ran a pilot project with NITI Aayog, Apollo Pharmacy, and Strides Pharma in which we tested the use of Oracle Blockchain Cloud technology in reducing the growing menace of fake drug production and distribution. The entire procedure and transaction are covered and recorded in a blockchain system, allowing everyone to track and trace the movement of the product, at any point in time.

Similarly, in the logistics and delivery sector, we supported the Logistics Division, under the Ministry of Commerce for a pilot project known as “Secured Logistics Document Exchange” or SLDE. This was introduced by the Ministry of Commerce with an aim to further improve ‘the ease of doing business in India and to lend more power and speed to projects by connecting all concerned departments on one platform. Our partner, CargoExchange, created the SLDE platform with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and our Blockchain Cloud Service. This solution was created to replace the current manual process of logistics document generation, exchange, and compliance with a digitised, secure, and seamless document exchange system. It is also a part of PM Gati Shakti's program which targets to cut logistics costs, increase cargo handling capacity, and reduce the turnaround time.

We believe the cloud is the catalyst to power up India’s billion people. Whether it is banking or enabling digital payments, digital education, financial inclusion, or supporting government initiatives in digitization, furthering industrial development, bolstering infrastructure, fighting cyber threats, and basically, connecting more people to the digital economy – Oracle can do that.

On the BFSI side, we bring to the market one of the more comprehensive sets of software solutions that can be deployed for all types of banking requirements. Be it Internet banking, Open API banking, Mobile, Retail deposits, loans as well as a complete set of features for corporate and SME banking including virtual accounts, cash and liquidity management, trade finance, supply chain finance, loans, and treasury operations.

We believe in open architecture and are strongly anchored on microservices. Our technology comes with the latest innovations including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and natural language Processing (NLP), and is integrated with numerous others, including Blockchain and IoT. For example, we help bankers leverage AI to help them make faster decisions on loans, or customers to read driving licenses from mobile device cameras to pre-fill application forms.

How has the techceleration benefited Oracle’s business momentum and vertical industry momentum?

India is a critical market and a significant contributor to Oracle JAPAC. This year marks the 30th anniversary of our operations in India, and it’s been an incredible journey. India continues to be one of the consistent and fastest growing regions – growing at double-digit across its technology, applications, and services portfolio. The business has been a solid growth engine with 100% cloud consumption growth last year. Our cloud renewal rates on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure business have grown significantly, beyond 74 percent for the entire year. The public sector vertical has increased over 2X last year. Our SaaS business also witnessed exceptional momentum. Q4FY23 has been one of our strongest quarters with overall growth of 43 percent, with an upward trajectory across all SaaS pillars – ERP at 44 percent, HCM at 14 percent, CX at 131 percent. Growth in HCM was our biggest driver at 20 percent Y-o-Y growth. Within SaaS, 35 percent of our revenue came from net new customers. Our expansion across businesses has come from sectors like banking, including cooperative banks, FinTech, telecom, manufacturing, and the public sector. Overall, we are closing ground-breaking deals and making inroads into new industries.

Besides the multi-year collaboration agreement with India’s Ministry of Education, Oracle also recently signed up Tanishq. Tanishq migrated its inventory management system to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). We also extended our partnership with IFFCO eBazar to unify its finance operations to drive greater efficiency and productivity. In the automotive sector, myTVS - India’s largest automotive aftermarket digital platform, integrated and digitized its processes, enhanced business insights, and improved decision-making to support its future expansion with Oracle Fusion Applications.

How do you see India as a Data Center nation with hyperscalers, and how has Oracle witnessed its transformation of being viewed as one of the top hyperscalers?

The need to digitalize has pushed the demand for the cloud and accelerated growth in the country across industries. The Internet is becoming a lifeline for people, both for work and entertainment. This move towards the cloud is increasing investments in hyperscale data centers, with the global data center market investments expected to reach ~US$200 billion per annum by 2025, as per NASSCOM. By 2025, India will witness a share in this growth, with investments expected to reach US$5 billion annually. India is expected to grow at 5 percent, 2X faster than global.

Oracle already powers 28 states and the union territories. India’s top telecommunications providers run on Oracle and so does India’s financial backbone.

We believe the cloud is the catalyst to power up India’s billion people. Whether it is banking or enabling digital payments, digital education, financial inclusion, or supporting government initiatives in digitization, furthering industrial development, bolstering infrastructure, fighting cyber threats, and basically, connecting more people to the digital economy – Oracle can do that.

Oracle has maintained and expanded its stronghold in India’s highly competitive cloud market. With two Oracle Cloud regions in Mumbai and Hyderabad, both empaneled by MeitY, Oracle complies with data sovereignty regulations, provides low-latency access to its cloud services for Indian customers, and supports them in their innovation journey. We are also introducing support for India’s localization of Oracle Fusion Cloud Payroll to local and MNC customers so they can adhere to local regulations and practices.

Recently, Oracle launched a unique cloud offering named EU Sovereign Cloud for governments across the EU. EU Sovereign Cloud enables commercial and public sector organizations to place sensitive data and applications in the cloud in alignment with EU data privacy and sovereignty requirements.

What is the future of modern cloud applications, hybrid and multi-cloud in India?

As India continues to strengthen its digital prowess, cloud applications will play a pivotal role as it has the potential to transform the Indian economy and make it more resilient and inclusive. The Indian government has been actively promoting the adoption of cloud technology through various initiatives. As cloud infrastructure becomes more robust and secure, government support and investments in this sector will likely boost the growth of hybrid and multi-cloud applications. Cloud applications have seen an upward trend across sectors like financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, etc. New age models like hybrid cloud allow businesses to maintain sensitive data on-premises while leveraging the scalability and flexibility of public cloud services for other aspects of their applications. The future is multi-cloud. Today, customers want flexibility and hyperscalers can provide well-integrated cloud ecosystems, allowing them to distribute data across various cloud providers. We recently announced the findings of our multi-cloud survey for India, a study aimed at understanding how IT leaders think about and use multi-cloud in their IT strategies. As per the study, 98 % of enterprises surveyed in India use or plan to use at least two cloud infrastructure providers, with 33 % using four or more.

Enterprises must select the best multi-cloud and hybrid options for their specific workloads, and none of them should bind them to a technological island. Oracle invests significantly in product and service innovation to provide customers with the variety and flexibility they require. Giving our partners and customers more choice has long been our top priority.

How all the above will change in the new age of AI with the advent of Generative AI. How is Oracle seeing Generative AI technology significantly impacting its customers in India?

Artificial Intelligence has rapidly advanced over the years, fundamentally changing how we interact with the world. AI and this new evolution of Generative AI are transforming businesses at a rapid pace. As per a Boston Consulting Group (BCG) survey, 60% of Indian executives are optimistic about the impact of Generative AI on the workplace. Generative AI models can assimilate knowledge from many sources and use it to automate tasks and enhance human creativity and productivity. Our philosophy with AI has always been that it should augment human intelligence, not replace it. Our strategy is built around the reality that enterprises work with AI through three modalities: Infrastructure, models, and services, and within applications. Oracle has developed robust, generative AI services for organizations in collaboration with Cohere, a leading enterprise AI platform. This collaboration aims to automate business processes, improve decision-making, and enhance customer experiences. We recently announced an addition of generative AI-powered capabilities with Oracle HCM to enhance efficiency and streamline HR processes for candidates, employees, managers, and recruiters.

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