ICT market analysis: India in 2047

31st edition of Dataquest Digital Leadership Conclave was held today, titled, India 2047: How to become a tech superpower? Dataquest was launched in Dec. 1982, and it has since come a long way ahead.

Anil Chopra, VP, Research & Consulting, CyberMedia Research, provided the ICT market analysis: India 2047. Pandemic has given us a hybrid world. It increased cloud adoption. Ir has translated into technology opportunities to move forward. Indian economy has been growing. We are poised to become $1 trillion economy by 2030. Digital transformation has changed the face of every industry.

Where is computing heading?

So, where is computing heading? The amount of data generated will reach 175ZB of data by 2025, and 75% will be generated and processed outside the data center. Data growth is leading to other technology trends. We have AI/Big data analytics, mobility, industrial IoT, and growth in IoT devices, etc. 

AI is being used across customer service, marketing and sales, predictive maintenance, HR, cyber security, finance, manufacturing, supply chain optimization, etc. Next, public cloud services market is expected to grow 23-30% CAGR in the next five years, and reach $17.8 billion. It has potential to account for ~8% of India's GDP by 2026. We are seeing roti, kapda, and cloud, app modernization, innovations in AI, and intelligent edge devices getting developed.

The Indian economy is expected to have 900 million Internet users by 2025. The Internet economy is expected to grow 6x to $1 trillion by 2030. We are seeing trends such as Web 3.0 and metaverse, e-commerce growth, and over 100 smart cities. We heard about NFTs, and there are also utility NFTs. Lot of technologies are also going to develop in the space.

In e-commerce, we are seeing Web 3.0 being used for customer service. We also have a mission for smart cities. Internet growth is fueled by lot of other technologies.

India also moved up to 5th most breached country in 2023 from 7th in 2022. There were over 5.3 million leaked accounts. Bad guys are also using AI for several attacks. AI-based phishing has become common, with GenAI used to scale attacks. DeepFake-as-a-service has seen videos being created for as low as Rs. 8. Data poisoning of training data sets on the cloud to compromise the integrity of cloud-based ML models. There are advanced deepfakes that are impossible to detect. We have a ticking timebomb for video-based KYC verification process. There are attack automation with advanced AI algorithms for more efficient, scalable, and intricate attacks. 

ICT sector will also be responsible for 14% of global carbon footprint by 2040. Global digital energy consumption is increasing by about 9% per year. As per Green Software Foundation, single desktop emits 132kg of CO2 per year. Amount of e-waste generated in India was an alarming 1.6 million tons in 2022. 

Broad tech themes are now dominating the future. The IT infrastructure will probably look like having hybrod at the center, edge, etc. There will be digital innovations, connectivity at scale, focus on more sustainability cyber security enhancements in the future. A CIO will go on to become the Chief Insights Officer. He/she will have to handle global compliance, beyond ICT.