Source: Ramesh Lalwani/flickr
In many ways 2015 has been a banner year for India’s technology sector, though the country has a long way to go to achieve the levels of connectivity and digital sophistication that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised to fulfill.
Tech in Asia reported that the massive amount of funding that occurred in India over the past couple of years continued in 2015 with over US$7.7 billion invested in tech startups. Additionally, a sharp rise in series A and B funding rounds has shown that the number of startups that are able to attract “follow-on funding” is increasing.
And a report issued this month from research firm Gartner says that India’s software market will grow 12.8% in 2015, and is on track to reach $5.3 billion next year. Gartner quotes Bhavish Sood, research director for the company: “The enterprise software marketplace is dynamic and ever-changing. Its growth and structure are being shaped by factors and forces of decentralized purchasing, consumerization, mobility, influence of other emerging markets, cloud-based implementations, and new consumption models.”
Trends such as software as a service, cloud adoption, and open source products and adoption are growing across India’s software market. Indeed, open source has had a big year in the country. As Blouin News reported earlier this year, Samsung’s homegrown operating system Tizen has expanded in India, and plans to launch more devices running the OS.
And the software build-out is occurring across multiple tech arenas, education included. When proper infrastructure is present, a bigger expansion of digital education tools can proceed — one of the tenets of Modi’s plan, dubbed Digital India — for elevating India’s tech markets. Earlier this year, in a trip to the U.S., Modi met with Silicon Valley executives, and announced plans to expand Wi-Fi coverage across 500 railway stations in India in collaboration with Google. Qualcomm has also promised $150 million in funding to foster start-ups.
Despite all this growth, the country must still reckon with its issues with censorship — something government officials have gone back and forth on as some restrictive measures have been implemented whereas others have been lifted over the past couple of years. And the issue of net neutrality is at the forefront of India’s tech scene right now as well, as Facebook’s free internet services have raised fears in the country that the social network is providing a biased type of web to unsuspecting users.
Still, part of Gartner’s conclusions reveal that the government participation in expanding the tech market is working. Modi has pushed to make it easier for tech businesses to attract foreign direct investment (FDI), and Sood noted that there has been a 27% increase year-over-year in FDI.
It will certainly be a balancing act over the next several years for India as connectivity improves, and foreign investment continues to pour in. But despite confusion over censorship and other regulatory measures concerning the internet, the intention to make India a leading power in tech is there.
