–Minhaj Zia
If you look at India as a market, there are various customer segments when it comes to video and unified communication(UC). Some of them are really advanced technology adopters while some are lagging or not yet aware of its impact on workforce productivity.
The primary focus for most customers today is increasing the productivity of their workforce to reduce costs and enable their people to come together as dynamic teams, no matter where they are located.
When I talk about early adopters of technology, there are three influential factors I refer to specifically when it comes to video collaboration:
1. IT services in India. This segment is growing very fast on an average of 15% year on year. It is worth almost $100 billion worth of exports collectively, employing close to 3.2 million people directly, and indirectly employing almost twice that number. That’s a large workforce of knowledge workers which serves not just the Indian market but globally too with huge numbers of customers in North America, Europe, Australia and even China. Their profitability is really dependent on workforce productivity, because their business is people – delivery teams who are typically based in India, and sales teams based out of other geographies – who are serving customers globally. Video collaboration enables employees to build trust among each other, save time in coordination of activities, and helps ensure projects are delivered to customers on time.
2. Government. India is a very large country and it is impossible for its administrators (ministers, government employees, and bureaucrats) to offer citizen services and coordinate projects down to a village level. The patience of citizens is also not what it used to be; in the internet age when citizens can get instant gratification from private sector services, they expect the same level of service from government departments as well. The easiest way to provide this is with video, as other technologies are not as effective in making such timely collaboration possible. There is also a lot of money being invested in the Digital India project, an ambitious program to digitise and automate entire processes of governance.
3. The proliferation of network in India. Previously the availability of networks was weak in certain rural areas and even in some urban areas. With huge growth in telecom and mobile data that continues very rapidly, Indian customers are now able to adopt video technology more easily.
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The Indian environment is evolving in many ways – transitioning from small towns to new cities, many new start-ups, and large growth of SMBs. There are 2 million SMB companies in India below 50 or 100 employees, and they are driving job creation and spurring on technology innovation, because they cannot leverage on large financial muscle or workforce to compete. Instead, these SMBs use technology to create new business models, which can disrupt the way large companies operate.
E-commerce is an example of this disruption. India had a very unorganised retail sector, unlike Western counterparts which operate large retail chains that dominate the industry. With the penetration of Internet, the retail sector here skipped the ‘large chain’ model of growth and quickly made a move to e-commerce. This presents an opportunity to provide technology-enabled collaboration to retailers to help them become more competitive in the market.
Government initiatives such as the Digital India project also present great opportunities. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a big digital and technology focus and initiated a lot of e-governance and digitization in Gujarat, where he was the Chief Minister. He is now driving these same initiatives at a country level and the Government has announced considerable investment for technology initiatives such as virtual classrooms for skills training.
This will be the solution for faster development of skills across the country, and bridge the gaps in the availability of specialised trainers. Through video classrooms, these trainers can reach people all over the country, no matter where they are located, and help develop required skills such as in manufacturing, another big focus for the Government driving programs like the Make in India campaign.
There is also a big push towards establishing good power and infrastructure in India – such as ports to city connectivity via roads and superfast railway lines. Faster delivery of these projects can only be achieved with strong collaboration. There was even a government circular directing employees to use video conferencing to save money on travel and make faster decisions. With a majority market share in government today, innovative collaboration technology and a strong presence in India, Polycom is very well placed to support these government initiatives.
(The author is the MD, India and SAARC of Polycom. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views of Channel Times or any of the websites managed or operated by Trivone Digital Services)