In a post-COVID world, multiple industries seem to have hit their stride in 2022. The year shaped up to be a crucial year for growth, especially for tech companies. As the year comes to an end, these leaders reflect on how their years went and discuss what market trends they are expecting in their respective categories.
“The Building Management System industry has witnessed a significant spurt in demand for HVAC systems and advanced IoT-embedded solutions. Throughout the year 2022, the industry has been amidst a technological revolution to keep up with the evolving needs of homebuyers and builders. Rapid technological advancement coupled with the adoption of IoT technologies have resulted in the creation of smarter and more efficient HVAC systems, which are enabling buildings with intelligent solutions. Building owners and facility managers are now striving towards newer energy efficiency standards as they get empowered by actionable intelligence.
The increase in pollution and poor indoor air quality has prompted India to prioritize building management solutions for ensuring an optimal working environment. With the government emphasizing on energy efficiency, green buildings, and climate control measures through its Energy Conservation (Amendment) Bill, sustainable business practices have started gaining momentum. Businesses are prioritizing converting to green buildings to be in line with the Indian government’s goal of achieving a net-zero emission status by the year 2070.
At 75F, we are very optimistic about the year ahead as we see a high demand for services in the BMS industry as businesses and building managers look towards optimizing operations and increased energy efficiency. With our Smart Building Technology and IoT solutions we look forward to being an active part of this journey towards a greener and sustainable future.”
Meet Vij , Co-founder, Lyne
“The consumer electronics sector, which is among the most active and quickly growing sectors, is showing no indications of slowing down in terms of sales or technological advancement. 2022 has also seen nothing but growth for the consumer electronics market. Especially with the health factor gaining more prominence and relevance, health tracking gadgets have taken the centre stage in innovation. Customer demand for smartwatches, with extensive health monitoring features has increased, leading to brands developing gadgets at affordable costs. Lyne, for example, has introduced the Lancer-1, a smartwatch with a complete health assessment system where it measures and monitors your necessary body vitals like heart rate, body temperature, and stress levels.
Other accessories such as headphones, earpods, and TWS showed a 62% QoQ growth in 2022, with an increased penetration, due to low prices, convenience of use, and suitable gifting options. By 2023, it is anticipated that 490 million wearable devices will be shipped worldwide.
As basic electronics are constantly updating their features to meet consumer expectations, the market growth for power banks has traditionally been slow. Despite this, since the “Work From Anywhere” idea has gained widespread acceptance throughout the globe, innovators are attempting to provide fast charge through all of their charging ports in order to gain a competitive edge.
The consumer electronics and accessories industry is anticipated to expand in the year 2023 as well. For example, the market for wireless headphones and earphones was worth INR 11.47 billion in 2016 and throughout the estimated period, it is anticipated to increase at a CAGR of 12.1%. Growth is undoubtedly impacted by manufacturing and importation expenses, but since overall demand also has an impact on these costs, the market will undoubtedly keep growing.”
Sarbojit Mallick, Instahyre- Co-Founder & CBO
With governments implementing stricter norms and taking stringent actions against counterfeiting across the globe, it is imperative for brands to integrate anti-counterfeit solutions backed by technology to protect authenticity of products. Cryptographic code embedded into the packaging solutions is one such cutting edge technology tool that will stand as a strong deterrent to counterfeiting.
At Ennoventure, we provide covert brand authentication and engagement solutions to create a direct relationship between the brand and the consumer. We believe that adoption of a connected packaging solution will increase conversion rates by multiple times, enabling brands to build a trustworthy relationship with their customers. We have several global engagements and look forward to building a counterfeit-free world.”
Also, 2022 saw strong tailwinds with organisations globally talking about ESG / Sustainability also as a core theme and taking aggressive objectives towards building net zero value chains. We believe this year was foundational in many ways and learnings post-Covid and carved a well thought future path for transformation and resilience in 2023″
The year 2022 was a positive one thanks to the increased adoption of technology and the provision of procurement services enabled by technology. Tech has played an increasingly important role in the supply chain in years past, leading to an ever-increasing reliance on tech-enabled sourcing. New factories and industrial parks have emerged since the introduction of the government’s pro-manufacturing “Make in India” policy, which has significantly boosted the growth of the sector. Other government initiatives, such as the National Manufacturing Policy and the PLI scheme for production, aim to bring India’s core manufacturing sector up to international manufacturing standards, and these have helped the country make steady progress toward Industry 4.0.
With the development of technologies like blockchain, AI, and augmented or virtual reality, the outlook for the procurement industry in 2023 appears promising. If SMEs in retail end up being a major economic force, the role of in-house sourcing experts will likely give way to that of consultants who work with multiple buyers to pool their procurement resources. Data and analytics are other significant factors that will continue to remain in the spotlight because they enable quicker decision-making, which in turn leads to better results.
The EV space in India is rapidly evolving. The growth opportunity is huge because of growing EV adoption. Our outlook is positive, and we are geared up to play our role in the transportation landscape transition. With multiple EV launches in the two-, three-, and four-wheeler space, and a robust growth rate of 686 percent in the first quarter of FY22, it’s evident that this has been the biggest year for electric mobility in India. Electric two-wheelers alone saw 250 percent y-o-y growth, while carmakers across all categories launched more models than in any previous year, and we’ll see a steady rise in EV launches in 2023.
In 2023, the government will focus more on developing EV infrastructure. The government is expected to propose provisions in the upcoming budget to promote the adoption of EVs and provide incentives for battery manufacturing. It will announce incentives to promote the domestic production of EVs and energy storage systems. There is also the possibility of a reduction of 5-20% of the existing import duty on parts used to make lithium batteries. Further, the government has also decreased the goods and services tax (GST) on EVs. To encourage domestic manufacturing of EVs, taxes on items like synthetic separators, anodes, and cathodes used in lithium-ion batteries can be reduced as well.
There has never been a more exhilarating — or challenging— time to be a tech leader.
From a high attrition rate to working remotely, to digitization, every day seemed to be a challenge for the IT industry.
To begin with, as IT companies recovered from supply chain disruptions brought on by the pandemic, they progressively began putting plans for unforeseen events and other operational risks. For this, they implemented systems with increased visibility and resilience.
With greater experience and composite personnel under their collective belts, tech companies improved their cultures, intensified experimentation with collaborative solutions, and created better methods to manage taxes.
However, we also can’t deny that the IT industry under performed. Due to an increased attrition rate, it started performing poorly at the beginning of 2022, resulting in employee costs rising dramatically and the businesses failed to pass those costs on to customers.
I think that driven by India’s stable political, geographical, and economic foundation, despite the global trend of growing layoffs, tech firms in India are expected to pick up their hiring in 2023. Alongside this, I think the IT industry would be comparatively lackluster in 2023 as businesses will become more cautious about development and expansion.
SpeckyFox also has great plans to expand its business in various domains and technologies. We would also like to become a 100+ team by the end of the year 2023
Anil Chawla, Managing Director, Customer Engagement Solutions, Verint
“In the last one year, Indian organizations have resonated a stronger position with respect to their global counterparts, when it comes to dealing with customers in a ubiquitous digital world. Indian CXOs continue to invest in customer engagement solutions, which has made them more resilient and better poised to close the engagement capacity gap. They achieved this by deploying efficient digital-first solutions for providing customers with the right experience at the right moment, on their channel of choice and by empowering employees with the right contextual knowledge to support consumers when required.
Some areas that organizations are still trying to address includes breaking the silos within the organization example the gap between front and back office, using interaction data to analyse and provide actionable insights, CX-Applications on cloud to offer better customer experience and improve time to market. It is evident that in near future, CX-First approach will be resonating with large enterprises in their strategic roadmap towards creating consistent customer engagement. It is only by strategically investing in the right customer engagement solutions at every touchpoint, be it customer-facing or at the back-end, Indian organizations will be able to experience a smooth customer journey through 2023.”
Manan Khurma, Founder & Chairman, Cuemath
“The pandemic forced the world to move to the online teaching module that heralded some unexplored avenues of teaching for the edtech players. With just USD 2 billion in funding inflows, a prolonged funding winter, skyrocketing layoffs, and many growing companies in the sector shutting shop, edtech brands have suffered to sustain their revenue and growth. The chaos in the industry has adversely impacted the reputation of edtech players, especially the ones catering to the K-12 segment. Learning from their mistakes and acquiring a deeper understanding of the customers’ and investors’ sentiments, the edtech brands serving K-12 now have a bigger responsibility of bringing trust and luster back to the industry. As we enter 2023, brands must address some critical aspects of the business. The biggest priority is to hyper-focus on delivering better learning outcomes. Push sales models should now transform into consultative exchanges for thoughtful acquisition. A value-driven transaction where learners succeed, and parents witness the outcomes will help build stronger customer relationships. Brands need to offer classes in online and offline formats that competent teachers deliver with a more personalized learning approach. Sustainability in terms of profitability and not valuation must become a fundamental tenet. The growth at the cost of enormous marketing spending, layoffs, and shrinking spending capabilities directly impact the company’s fundamental stability. Edtech businesses must be cognizant of their bloated CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) and shrunken LTV (Lifetime Value) as it will lead to further cost increases.”
Manish Gupta, Vice President and General Manager, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Dell Technologies India
“In 2023, we expect to see businesses proactively shift to a multicloud environment to gain control over data and critical applications. Businesses would need to reduce complexities of their existing cloud infrastructure to better manage their data without added expenditures.
As ease of doing business remained a priority in 2022, adoption of sustainable technologies shall pick-up to a greater degree in 2023. More Indian businesses will look for sustainable IT solutions in the new year to ensure that they leave an impact in people’s lives beyond their industrial sphere.
While data, both structured and structured, stays distributed across cloud and edge environments, businesses will move to urgently amend their cybersecurity approach. Zero Trust architecture is going to become the cornerstone of data security in 2023.
While 5G offers huge performance improvements in bandwidth and latency creating completely new use cases, it also enables more and more devices to be connected to the network. This creates a massive new pool of these connected devices or endpoints. The security of these endpoints must be managed throughout their lifecycle, especially since a lot of these could contain sensitive information including biometrics. Businesses must build effective and long-term strategies to mitigate potential threats arising from something as simple as a door lock connected through a SIM card.
Looking into next year, business resilience, innovation, sustainability, and an immersive user experience, underscored by futuristic technologies would continue to drive business agendas across industries.”
“This year has been full of opportunities and challenges alike for the IT industry. Most part of the year saw a huge uptick in demand due to the fast pace of digital transformation, cloud adoption, and accelerated spend on data analytics & insights. However, it also brought uncomfortably high attrition rates and astronomical talent cost escalation. As we are coming to the close, there are recessionary headwinds and more so, uncertainties around how deep or long it is going to be. Come 2023, the key will be to focus on building scenarios that will help companies manage accelerated growth if it returns quickly, and not miss the bus as well as be prepared to manage cost and conserve cash if the downturn lasts longer than anticipate”
Kapil Makhija, Vice President-Technology (Cloud), Oracle India
“The coming year will certainly be transformational and will have multiple avenues especially for enterprises wanting to innovate further and make technology the base of everything. In the last few years, we have witnessed organisations learn to embrace cloud and now those organisations would want to move ahead and further their cloud journey with sophisticated cloud environments to get the most out of their investments. At Oracle, being a customer centric organization, we understand the importance of making cloud simple, cost effective and available for all.”
He added “Aligned with the market requirement, we have made our multicloud and hybrid cloud portfolio robust enough to support minutest of business requirements. We also realise that a cloud first world would only be possible if businesses across industries feel open enough to leverage cloud. Therefore, we have offerings such as OCI dedicated region that can effectively cater to regulated industries helping them initiate their cloud journey. We consider ourselves strategic partners for our customers and will continue to support them through our 24/7 access to a global team of support and service specialists as they proceed in their cloud journey.”
