Union Budget 2022: Continued Focus on Building India's Digital First Future

Presenting The Cloud Enterprise, a special series led by Searce and Google Cloud, in partnership with Moneycontrol, which brings together leading voices to deliver insights on the adoption of cloud technologies and its success.

While India's second paperless budget talks extensively about physical infrastructure, the focus on building India's Digital First future hasn't dimmed. From introducing e-passports and establishing digital universities to using drones for agriculture and rolling out a National Digital Health ecosystem, the focus of the government clearly remains on sunrise sectors and the digital economy.

The National Digital Health (NDH) ecosystem relies heavily on Big Data and AI. It's vision is to be the single source of truth on personal health data, with a federated architecture that allows for connectors to data, as opposed to data consolidation. Therefore, interoperability and platform agnosticism is built into the system. On the policy side, the NDH focuses on privacy and data security by design and it creates inclusivity through creative solutioning for pockets where digital literacy is low.

The financial support for the digital payment ecosystem announced in the previous budget continues in 2022-23, encouraging the adoption of digital payments. The government's vision of making digital banking accessible to every citizen also gets a leg up with plans to create 75 digital banking units in 75 districts. 

The government has also announced the introduction of digital rupee using blockchain which will be issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) during the next financial year. This measure would boost the digital economy by easing transactions, lowering costs and enabling efficient regulation. India would likely be amongst the first of the large economies to introduce such a measure, effectively differentiating between digital currencies and crypto assets.

If this is the pace the government is setting, can businesses afford to lag behind?

As digital banking becomes more accessible, the BFSI sector will need to leverage big data, analytics and AI to create product and service offerings that work for different slices of their customer demographic. Customer volume of this magnitude comes with it's own problems. Servicing customers in these volumes will involve AI powered chatbots and contact centre solutions to keep servicing costs down and customer experience consistent. Predictive Analytics will need to be an essential customer service strategy to head off potential problems, while helping BFSI playFeatures Google Cloud,rs to create omnichannel experiences that encourage renewals, add-ons, referrals and new sales.

The pace of transformation in the next 25 years will be challenging, and this is where low code and no code platforms can act as accelerators. By facilitating rapid development and testing cycles, low/no code platforms accelerate digital transformation and application modernisation. Because low/no code builds so rapidly, it further enables organisations to improve user productivity and adoption, and maximise ROI of process transformation and application modernization projects.

In a recent interview, the Finance Minister talked about the great strides India has made in digitisation - from Aadhar, to land registry, to e-payments, to GST. She talked about India's digital stack needing to talk to one another; and also being able to talk to its partners in other countries. By leveraging a combination of data warehousing solutions, Big Data, Data Analytics, and AI & ML tools, the government can create efficiencies in the way this abundance of Government data is accessed, stored and used, enabling better decision making at every level, increasing transparency and reducing silos. Data lakes, combined with AI tools and ML models can generate timely and actionable insights that can plug into the 25 year plan, while helping sidestep potential problems.

This budget with it's push for high speed broadband and 5G, is only going to amplify the pace at which the program bears fruit, while also cementing the Work From Anywhere culture that took firm root during the Covid pandemic. Hybrid working is here to stay, but it is still a big change, especially for those who were expecting things to go back to normal. However, with the right workplace solutions, companies can expect the same (if not stronger) levels of productivity and collaboration.

Mumbai based Caravel logistics, for instance, weren't equipped for the new work from home norms when the pandemic struck. They had to split between using Google Workspace and their legacy environment, but it didn't work well. Not only were there drawbacks in terms of user experience and security, it also increased their costs. Searce, a consulting firm with deep expertise in cloud technology, helped Caravel Logistics to improve their uptime by 80%, improve their security score to 76%, reduce costs and improve collaboration and overall ease of use, by shifting to Google Workspace entirely.

In the same vein, the Kirloskar Group were struggling with cluttered email storage, unfriendly video conferencing tools and the overall absence of reliable cloud storage when the pandemic hit. They needed a platform that could support their new work from home norms with better cost optimization and increased data security. Searce initiated the transition in 3 batches, eventually moving 1000+ employees across 14 Kirloskar companies within 60 days to Google Workspace.

Conclusion 

Irrespective of industry, sector and size, Indian businesses have something to celebrate in what is being called "the most capitalist budget" presented by an Indian Finance Minister. The augmentation of India's physical and digital infrastructure is set to improve the ease of doing business, reduce logistics costs overall, and eliminate the need for tedious paperwork. As a natural outcome of this ecosystem, Indian businesses can expect intense competition from their own peers, as artificial barriers to growth and opportunity fall away. For businesses to survive and thrive in such an environment, digital transformation is a key strategy.

The Government is setting the tone with its own digital transformation via the adoption of Big Data, Data Analytics, AI and Cloud across various programs. It is an open challenge to Indian businesses to keep pace, and thrive through transformation.

Moneycontrol journalists were not involved in the creation of the article.