IAMAI Digital Transformation Summit: Industry Stalwarts Show Optimism; Say Will Bounce Back after Second Covid Wave

Speaking on the first day of the Digital Transformation Summit by IAMAI, industry stalwarts today exuded confidence in full recovery from the ravages incited by the second wave of the pandemic. They said that technology investment, demographics and rise in consumption will be the key factors driving the growth.

Optimism from the Industry

Sameer Garde, President, India & SAARC, Cisco India, said, “Digital mission is a boon in order to manage a crisis like this. It would be easier for a young country like ours to adapt to the new way of working".

Further, he added that, "every sector, BFSI, Auto, Retail, is adopting the hybrid working model". He further said, "in fact, startups, SMEs and the government too are adopting hybrid and strengthening their digital armour".

With all these, once this wave gets over, we would be staring at a massive growth wave”, Garde added.

The industry is of the view that although, the second wave has impacted at a larger scale than the first wave, but vaccination rollout remains the ray of hope this time.

Venu Nair, MD & CEO, Shoppers' Stop, talked about how the pandemic affected businesses. He said, “the difference between first and the second wave is that we have a vaccine now, so it’s a finite issue and the only question is how the vaccine would be rolled out".

"During this period, we have seen a lot of shifts which has happened around consumer behaviour, the way we do business", he added. Further, he said, "in fact, technology has got fast-tracked. In a nutshell, our fundamentals remain strong and in the next 10 years, from retail, consumption per se, we will see 10-11% growth”.

In 2020, 94.7% of Indian organizations fast-tracked some level of digital transformation programmes. Further, 92.3% are reinventing their business models. These staggering statistics indicate an unprecedented scale of change in the organizational landscape. This was reported in a report - Intelligent Automation: The Future of Digitalization– released by PWC and IAMAI at the summit.

Amitabh Chaudhry, Managing Director and CEO, Axis Bank, talked about the increased investment in digital. He said that, “we have invested in digital tremendously". Talking about the bank's IT spend, he said, "our IT spend for the past two years is up at around 70%".

He also said that Axis Bank is increasing the number of staff working in IT.

"As the third-largest private sector bank, one of our important tools is digital to leapfrog. Whether it’s our offerings, products, customer experience, technology allows us to improve and to move ahead", he added.

Pointing out that digital transformation is a top strategic objective today, the report also suggested that artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to increase economic growth exponentially over the next few decades. Sixty-four per cent of Indian organisations expect to increase demand for cloud computing as a result of Covid-19 alone. The combination of digital and physical technologies like AI, IoT, additive manufacturing, robotics, cloud computing, and others are expected to disrupt established business models and challenge the status quo of how organizations operate, what employees and customers expect from them, and how they compete in the market.

The two-day event will see about 2,000 delegates, comprising Chief Digital Officers, Chief Technology Officers and Chief Information Officers, 25 sessions, six tracks with over 70 speakers.