Jagdish Mitra, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Growth, Tech Mahindra
“The digital landscape evolved rapidly in 2022, and with Hon’ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi launching 5G services, India is poised to lead the new era of digital revolution. Powered by India’s promising growth roadmap, 2023 has the potential to provide the impetus required for India to become digitally ready and to lead technological advancements for the rest of the world to follow. The advancement of existing technologies and the emergence of new trends have reshaped our working patterns and ushered in significant transformations across industries. Artificial intelligence, for example, has become a reality in businesses, and other technologies such as metaverse, blockchain, robotics, and digital twins are expected to follow the suit in the coming years. Furthermore, the adoption of Industry 4.0 has strengthened the supply chain ecosystem, transformed manufacturing, and instilled resilience in enterprise operations. We at Tech Mahindra believe that these tech trends coupled with SAAS as the delivery model will unlock immense potential for businesses in India and help boost the Indian economy like never before and are hence calling them out as our big bets for the future of tech.
I believe in 2023, we will see significant progress in autonomous systems, 5G, and green technology, as well as a quantum leap in technological skilling to digital transformation-related skilling. With digitization sweeping the globe, these emerging technology trends will define the ‘Techade’ and put India on the map as a technology superpower. India has the potential to take the lead in technological innovation, and 2023 will see a continued push toward sustainable progress, supported by newer sustainable technology trends.”
Anku Jain, Managing Director, MediaTek India
“During 2022, MediaTek succeeded in delivering on the 5G aspirations of OEMs while also maintaining the 4G/5G mobile volume share leadership with a focus on the mid-level category. Flagship-level smartphones with superior cameras, gaming, and high-end display caught the wide attention. Ground-breaking launches like MediaTek Dimensity 9200 and Dimensity 9000 have brought new benchmark performance for 5G smartphones. MediaTek maintained its leadership in Smart TVs, smart speakers/displays, and Arm Chromebook and emerged as No.1 in the Wi-Fi segment across Retail, Broadband and Consumer Devices.
MediaTek is a leader in Mobile PMIC, Computing & Display and succeeded in developing an exhaustive 5G technology portfolio. We are driven by our vision to deliver incredible technologies to power incredible lives and going forward we will expand our 5G portfolio to 5G Thin Modem, redcap & wearables, automotive telematics and industrial M2M/IoT, and focus on emerging trends like Metaverse, Wi-Fi 7, and power management applications in Computing & Storage of the future.”
Rajiv Bhalla, Managing Director, India & Vice President APAC, at Barco
“In 2022, we navigated the bend to lead the digital transformation and innovation disruption, powered by new-age technologies, and accelerated its amalgamation across operations and workflows. Fueled by India’s promising growth prospects, 2023 is truly going to be a ‘Techade’, given the focus on mega trends such as digitalization, R&D and innovation, local manufacturing, global offshoring, among others. As India is set to lead the G20 agenda in 2023, a lot of focus will be on India’s capabilities to power sustainable economic growth and development and thereby setting a precedence for others to follow.
With the focus moving from technology usage across enterprises to leveraging emerging technologies for a better future, we foresee technologies like AL/ML, cloud computing, 5G, IoT and automation to drive sustainable solutions and new use cases across sectors, industries, governance and citizen services. The global enterprise IT spending estimated to increase significantly in the next year and there is going to be renewed demand for control room solutions, projection technologies and video wall solutions, smart infrastructure, hybrid collation solutions, among others.”
Agendra Kumar, MD, Esri India
“Technology has indeed been the engine of change worldwide, and India has been the hub of many exciting technological developments in the past year. Customized solutions for solving India-centric problems are the need of the hour. Esri India’s IndoArcGIS which provides GIS-based solutions for a wide range of problems that we face as a country became very popular among our users. Moving ahead, technology trends like the integration of various types of data in GIS systems, data portals to enable easy sharing of data, and Geo-Hubs to create more collaborative working environments and increase community engagement are going to transform the way geospatial technologies are being consumed. Other trends like GeoAI, GIS on Cloud, digital twins, immersive experiences, and advanced spatial analytics will further cater to improved and secure solutions for industries and masses alike. These tech trends will help enterprises boost their speed and agility, reduce complexity and save costs while concurrently enabling unmatched connectivity.”
Nokia India Spokesperson
“2022 has been a landmark year for the telecom sector. Nokia has been greatly encouraged by the pace and efficiency of 5G spectrum allocations in India and the extension of the PLI scheme. We reaffirm our commitment to enable our partners achieve rapid 5G deployment – likely to be one of the fastest rollouts in the world. Major CSPs have announced plans to have a pan-India 5G presence by end of 2023 or early 2024 and we are supporting the implementation of several thousand sites across various circles every week.
In 2023, we hope to see continued Government support in enabling the digital ecosystem to truly tap the benefits of the socio-economic applications of 5G technology. 2023 is also expected to witness wider adoption of private networks by enterprises and businesses for enhanced efficiency and security.
Further, we hope to support India’s full and equal participation in the evolution of 6G standards in the next few years as our R&D engineers based here continue to contribute to the collaborative global effort.”
Arvind Bali, CEO, Telecom Sector Skill Council
“2022 was a phenomenal year for the telecom and skilling industries. Both saw significant reforms in both policies and initiatives which have elevated their contribution in nation building. We at Telecom SSC have been closely working with both ministries and secretaries to enhance the aspirations of the youth to work in new fields like 5G, IoT, Drone tech and many more. Shri K Rajaraman (Secretary, DoT) has been personally driving the telecom skilling initiative with monthly review meetings to ensure availability of adequate skilled workforce for the next wave in telecom.
Over the next 3 years, we will be training over 1 lac budding youth in these technologies and many more. We plan to add 10 CoEs and the 1 lac training is being done with DoT oversight. We are going to add 100 new courses to our roster for use cases in both legacy and new technologies. The rollout of 5G will help accelerate advancement in skilling and telecom. We lend our support to the government and industry initiatives to empower the next generation of India.”
Manoranjan Mohapatra, CEO, Comviva
“2022 has been a phenomenal year for all of us at Comviva. Our reinvention as a leading digital technology platform partner and expansion into new western markets like the US and Europe has been extremely encouraging and expected to fuel future growth. We received a very strong response on our new “digital transformation & commerce platform” and “growth marketing” solutions. As we grow, we shall invest more in building differentiated propositions and use cases around Enriched Marketing and Customer Experience, Digital Enterprise & commerce solutions and Embedded Payments solutions. We shall continue our focus on building the next Gen platforms that are AI / ML Powered, Cloud native, SaaS-enabled and API driven.”
Gururaj, Managing Director, Optiemus Electronics
“We at Optiemus are constantly working towards contributing to India’s efforts to become a major electronics manufacturing hub globally. 2022 was a major boost for the electronics industry with schemes like PLI and Phased Manufacturing Program pushing indigenous manufacturing in mobile phones, hearables/wearables and other categories. The hearable/wearable industry in India recorded 171% YoY growth in smartwatches, to become the biggest smartwatch market in the world. Optiemus has been at the forefront of this phenomenal journey of the hearable/wearable industry and has partnered with major lifestyle brands like Noise, HARMAN, DIZO, Truke, Wings to manufacture their products from the two existing state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities located in Noida, Uttar Pradesh.
With our efforts in the hearable/wearable segment, we also achieved the successful record production of “One million wearables and hearables” in a month at our manufacturing plants. Under the visionary leadership of our Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ji, India has made significant progress in electronics manufacturing this year and initiatives like Phased Manufacturing Programme introduced for Hearable/Wearable in the Union Budget 2022 helped immensely to fuel the growth.
Our partner, Wistron is providing active support to create world-class processes in the manufacturing operations and Optiemus is working with leading multinational companies for multiple segments of business to move towards volume production of their products. In 2023, we will diversify our efforts into various segments like IT hardware and telecom equipment manufacturing as well. Also, OEL now has the installed capacity to manufacture 8 lac smartphones in a month and is in the advanced stage of discussions with key global brands.
As the country is witnessing a wider rollout of 5G services, we are actively expanding our capabilities in 5G telecom equipment and have partnered with leading companies to supply 5G products. We also aim to strengthen the IT Hardware segment by expanding laptop manufacturing and starting new categories like mini pc, etc. Adding on to that, we have plans to enter emerging categories like IoT and EV as India adopts new technologies.
On the expansion front furthermore, Optiemus is all set to open its 3rd state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Noida with a capacity for high volume manufacturing of wearables and other products units which will further strengthen our manufacturing capabilities. The electronics industry is set for the next wave of revolution in the coming year and 2023 can be the major milestone year in our aim to make further progress towards realising “Atmanirbhar Bharat” in electronics.”
Rahul Tandon, Senior Vice President, Mobile operator Business IDEMIA India
“As India ushers in 5G connectivity it opens up many new capabilities to enhance productivity and safety of not only online transactions but Machine2Machine (M2M) transactions as well. The network technologies 5G, 5Gi, 4G and under Low power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) such as Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT), LTE-M, Long Range Radio (LoRa), ZigBee and SigFox are creating new business opportunities around these technologies. Indeed, the magical combination of these technologies will change the contours for connectivity, security and analytics. However we also believe its time for the industry to define the scope of connected technology with respect to its security for all aspects, such as devices, connectivity, secure deployment and their physical security”.
Praval Singh, VP – Marketing & Customer Experience, Zoho Corp.
“We now have over 80 million users, 12k employees, and 55+ products; we also crossed $1bn in global annual revenue. From the product development side, our strategy to vertically, horizontally and contextually unify our technology stack, has helped us gain market traction, and reduce customer churn. By offering unified solutions, across various categories, that also integrate well with third-party solutions, Zoho is witnessing increased adoption from mid-and- large size businesses, especially in India. There is an uptake of Zoho CRM Plus, Zoho People Plus and Zoho One amongst mid-large sized businesses, while Zoho Books and Zoho Workplace are seeing mass market adoption.
This year, we have launched Zoho Marketing Plus, a new improved Zoho Creator Platform, and new updates in Zoho Desk. We have also integrated our e-commerce software, Zoho Commerce with ONDC. Our internal R&D efforts have also helped us further improve our artificial intelligence and audio-video conferencing tech stack this year, both of which are offered across a range of our solutions. Besides, in continuation of the commitment to build deep-tech capabilities and critical know-how in India, Zoho invested in Genrobotics, a home-grown startup building robotics and AI-powered solutions to eradicate manual scavenging.
Region-wise, India is our fastest growing market. We are also growing rapidly in other developing markets like the Middle East and Africa. For our global expansion, we are following transnational localism, a strategy wherein Zoho’s growth is rooted in closely working with and serving the local communities, businesses and ecosystem, while staying connected through shared knowledge and culture. Aside from continuing to operate our non-urban and rural offices in India, we have opened an office in Nigeria, launched localised versions of Zoho Books, compliant with local tax laws, in Kenya and Mexico, and hired across geographies to support our growth in different regions. We have also integrated with local payment gateways in different countries, partnered with government bodies and startup groups to remove access barrier to enterprise technology.
Overall, it has been a good year despite a relatively slower growth in comparison to the previous year (2021). Looking forward, we are optimistic about our business but given the pessimistic economic outlook, we will remain cautious with our hiring and marketing spend while providing our customers robust business technology at great value.”
Amit Deshpande (Sr. Vice President and Head of India Development Center(IDC), SpringML, Inc.)
“Yet another year of Simplifying Complexity, 2022 has been significant for us at SpringML. In-person events resumed this year and we are proud to have sponsored and participated in marquee events like Google Next 22, Google Government Summit 22, Dreamforce 2022, Snowflake Summit, and Tableau Conference among many others. The year began on a remarkable note when we were recognized as Google Cloud’s Partner for the month for February 2022.
We launched our Javelin Accelerator solution to help organizations simplify and accelerate their Java application modernization journey to migrate to Google Cloud. SpringML also renewed its Machine Learning Specialization in the Google Cloud Partner Advantage Program for the 3rd time in a row.
This year also marked the inauguration of the new office space of our India Development Center in Hyderabad. Our team now has the choice to come into a world class facility to continue to learn and innovate together.
I expect the digital transformation wave induced by the pandemic to continue in 2023 as organizations make cloud adoption their top priority. Innovation using AI/ML continues to push organizations to automate processes and gather data-driven insights to solve complex business problems.”
Chaitanya Chokkareddy, Ozonetel Chief Product Officer
- How has the year 2022 been forOzonetel?
It has been a busy and productive year at Ozonetel. We have been scaling up at a tremendous rate, doubling our employee headcount across all departments, and acquiring over 800+ customers in less than twelve months. Most importantly, we have won the trust of Enterprise Customers, a segment that was, till recently, reluctant to move to the Cloud. One of our biggest successes in this segment includes migrating one of India’s largest banking and financial conglomerate and five of its subsidiaries from legacy to our cloud based CCaaS solution.
In the United States too, we have improved our footprint with some extremely promising partnerships. As always, we have continued to make innovative developments in our product. In 2022, we launched the comprehensive CCaaS Platform on WhatsApp and have made big advancements in conversational AI. Our Speech Analytics solution that won the prestigious Frost & Sullivan’s Product Innovation Award is a breakthrough for advancing contact centers from cost centers to valuable sources of data and profit.
- Tech predictions in the cloud communication space for 2023
In 2023, cloud communications will continue intensifying its edge over legacy solutions in three core areas: Integrations, AI, and omnichannel.
To create a comprehensive CX platform, businesses will need to integrate their various sources of data, internal and external communication channels, and other business tools to operate as a single cohesive platform. A CCaaS solution with integrations and partnerships with third-party applications and omnichannel capabilities will be essential to unify communications across the customer journey.
As machine learning advances, conversational AI will continue to make strides. Conversations with customer-facing AI such as chatbots will continue to become more natural and human-like. The big innovations, however, will be on the agent-facing and supervisor-facing AI front. Businesses can expect AI-based analytics to sift through contact center conversations, both voice, and chat, to identify core CX issues: the root cause of customer dissatisfaction, successful sales pitches, and opportunities for cross-selling, and up-sell—with an accuracy and ease that was unavailable to them before.
Ozonetel’s Outlook for the year 2023
We continue to have an optimistic outlook for 2023. While worries about a global slowdown may be on the minds of many leaders, customer experience will continue to be an important focal point and investment for them to secure customer loyalty and drive growth. Cloud-based, CX-focused solutions such as ours offer businesses a way to increase efficiency, automate processes, and deliver on this promise of high customer experience at a lower cost per customer. With this in mind, we expect increased growth both in India and the United States markets. In both markets, but especially in the United States, we will focus on strengthening our channel ecosystem of technology alliances, resellers, and distributors.
Rajesh Ganesan, President, ManageEngine.
How has the year 2022 been for ManageEngine
“If 2021 was the year of resurgence after the pandemic, 2022 has been one of consolidation of the steady growth path. Between July 2021 and 2022, markets saw heavy swings leading to the world facing hard macro-economic conditions.
ManageEngine turned twenty this year, and our grounded business model has helped us navigate the market swings well, particularly in India, where business grew nearly 65% in 2021 to become the third-largest market in terms of revenue for ManageEngine. The customer count has doubled in India over the last five years, and we see great traction among medium and large enterprises.
ManageEngine believes in organic growth—it’s how we’ve always operated—and we’re well on our way to adding over 1,000 new employees this year. Globally, too, we expect to end the year at a decent two-digit growth as we expand our footprint by opening multiple new offices and exclusive data centres. Our parent company, Zoho, recently announced crossing one billion USD in revenue, with ManageEngine making a significant contribution”.
Outlook for 2023
“IT is an underpinning for businesses with aspirations to stand out among their competition, grow across geographies and lead with business innovations. When IT teams work towards a common goal, i.e., delivering innovation to the masses, they can ensure technology is used in a safe manner, adhering to security and privacy regulations, something non-IT people often overlook. IT teams are also the early adopters of cutting-edge technologies like blockchain, AI, and ML, which results in higher rates of adoption of these technologies in other areas of the business”.
Apurva Mankad, Founder and CEO of WebXpress
“Growth of e-commerce has resulted in massive investment in warehouse capacity across the country, with transportation network to match. 2022 was a watershed year for India logistics sector with unveiling of detailed logistics policy by Government of India. There was also a concerted move towards Electric Vehicles with many logistics companies declaring intention to meet Net Zero targets and turn carbon neutral. In post-pandemic era, global supply chains are in process of reconfiguration with India finding favour as global manufacturing hub. Under new logistics policy, many multi-modal logistics parks will be commissioned. All of these will lead to significant reduction in logistics costs and reduced bottlenecks. The “Amritkal” of Indian logistics has well and truly begun.”
Satya Prabhakar, CEO of Sulukha.com, and ProManage
“May they be big or small, businesses have realized how a hyperlocal approach can have a massive managerial and bottom-line impact. Being in the local services industry for over 15 years now, we are moving a step ahead into hyperlocal marketing this year with the latest launch of ProManage. ProManage helps businesses to improve and increase customer engagement metrics and grow bigger in the respective markets. We want to truly connect consumers to businesses, be they conglomerates or brick-and-mortar stores. This marketing strategy is set to dominate in the next 12 months and will help brands cater to the Customer Experience of each store, Employee Engagement, managing reviews, etc. Our learning experience with ProManage is that large enterprises and brands having standardized digital storefronts (Hyperlocal listings) have recorded growth between 40% to 1400% in actions via hyperlocal marketing. With the increasing salience for customer experience than ever, hyperlocal marketing is the key to contributing to the nation’s hopes of becoming a truly Digital Economy.”
Saravana Kumar, Founder and CEO, Kovai.co
How has the year 2022 been for Kovai.co and what are some predictions for 2023 in terms of how the industry will shape up?
“Though we had a slow start to the year, with our sales numbers being slightly slower than expected, it gave us the time to focus on strengthening our product— Document360 by adding a lot of new & rich features and enhancements. However, the second half of the year saw a good uptick in activity leading to us being able to sustain both customer acquisition and retention.
Microsoft’s announcement in January this year, advising companies using BizTalk Server to opt for Azure if they wanted to move to cloud, led to us seeing a massive increase in traction and demand for our azure monitoring tool Serverless360. This seems to have made the market ready to embrace our product.
2022 was also a landmark year for Kovai.co because we launched the newest product in our portfolio— Churn360, a product we had been building for the past two years. The product has already begun acquiring its first few customers. Though the market may look uncertain due to global factors, in 2023 we plan to continue focusing on our GTM efforts to scale up all our products through existing and newer marketing channels – This is in sync to our long term goal of becoming a SaaS-Unicorn by 2030. “
Mr. Ashish Kumar, Chief Data Scientist, INDIUM
Data Analytics
AI trends and its applications to watch out for in 2023
– Generative AI has emerged as one of the most promising applications of AI in real world. It was believed that creative fields would be tougher for AI to learn but opposite has happened; with advent of Whisper AI (for super-accurate multilingual voice to text transcription), chatGPT (LLM for human like conversation and content generation) and DALLE-2 and Stable Diffusion ( for generating image from text prompts) the creative tasks like art/photo design, marketing ad copies, video editing and subtitling look set to be done fully or highly assisted by AI in near future. Innovation in this field is happening at a breakneck speed led by likes OpenAI and Deep Mind
– Big Techs have done layoffs to make their EBITDA numbers look glossy which have come as an opportunity for startups like Open AI, Hugging Face etc.
– Synthetic data is another trend which is by-product of generative AI revolution and can have an impact on adoption of data science by removing the hurdle of availability of training data to create new models for small and medium sized tech companies.
– In ML world, a lot of focus has shifted to make the trained models work and operate continuously. This is critical as otherwise even the most accurate model is useless. A lot of independent products have started in this space which provide facilities to retain models, detect data and model drifts. MLOps will continue to see a lot of traction just that here it can’t be totally independent of model development part (as it is in usual DevOps)
– Emergence of graph databases and graph neural networks for next generation recommendation systems is another trend to watch out for
– A lot of ML workflows of large enterprises would happen on one of the cloud platforms like AWS sagemaker , GCP Vertex AI or Azure Databricks
– Drug discovery is one of the areas where AI is doing surprisingly very well
– AI explain ability remains one of the major prerequisites for AI adoption. It is well accentuated by the need for AI safety (content bias and biased decision making) and AI auditing
– Hugging Face is leading the way in adoption of ML and AI models by creating a repository and ecosystem of pretrained models for tasks like sentiment analysis, question answering, paraphrasing, text classification etc
Prashant Lohia, Founder & CEO Ginesys
“In 2023 I believe omnichannel play will really make a big splash in Indian retail. So far only a handful of brands have been successful at it. D2C brands will continue to disrupt markets with new and unique brands breaking the clutter online. I feel that there will be some adoption of AI tech in retail too especially for personalization of marketing campaigns.
About Ginesys
Ginesys is a leader in the ERP and POS space in India, is building Ginesys One to provide online and offline retail companies a full omniretail tech suite, enabling them to sell offline and online. Ginesys One is a cloud-based, complete retail management software suite for all retail businesses, including brands, MBO store chains, department stores, distribution businesses and online D2C businesses. With over 300 employees and 1200+ customers it is the most popular suite by far for retail.”
PV Bharadwaj, Managing Director of Aura Air India
“Watching the air quality map of India today reveals that poor air quality is no longer just a problem of “North India”, it is a PAN India problem. More businesses have taken initiatives in the last year to provide clean air to their employees since they spend the majority of their time at work. While Air Purifiers for homes remain a large segment, the enterprise’s expectations are completely different and beyond the understanding of consumer brands. Big players such as WIPRO Lighting entering the air quality industry in partnership with Aura Air is an indicator of the growing problem and opportunities it brings along with this problem in the enterprise space.”
Sabarinath Nair, CEO of Skillveri
“2022 has been an eventful year with Skillveri expanding its international reach. Skillveri participated in Skills Canada 2022 in Vancouver along with our partner Cognisco Technologies, and largest customer Vancouver Community College which has 28 simulators installed.
2022 also saw Skillveri strengthen its base in the construction equipment sector with acquiring Case New Holland as a customer, and repeating orders from JCB. The YoY revenue grew 170% in 2022.
For 2023, Skillveri is targeting a 200% year-on-year growth, mainly driven from the export market. Skillveri is all set to accelerate its global presence, with a new entity to be started in the US, and driving further the operations of its UK entity started just pre-pandemic.
In the domestic market, Skillveri is expecting fast growth of its AC technician repair training module in Virtual Reality, that has just now completed its beta trials with great reviews. Its existing solutions for the decorative painting market has been enhanced with a mixed reality tool for estimation and visualization for painting contractors, in addition to the popular Skillveri Chroma spray painting training module that is already used by all major paint companies.”
Travellers today are looking for more impact and purpose-driven holidays wherein they can immerse themselves in the local culture. In the social world, it is all about experiences – be it travel, cuisines, or accommodation. In a post-pandemic world, people are a lot more focused on balancing work and life, giving a boost to the concept of Bleisure. Another trend is shorter stays, short-haul travel, and value for money new unique destinations with off-the-beaten-track experiences. The urge to try something new and adventurous is also gaining ground. Finally, sustainability will have its fair share with travellers looking to be more responsible in their travels – be it reducing carbon footprints to buying local produce and crafts. It is all about giving back and caring for nature.
But as they say, hope springs eternal. I believe 2023 is going to be one where trust, especially the digital variety, is going to take centre stage. With artificial intelligence, machine learning and other such technologies playing a larger role in human life, the need for trust is going to be critical like never before. Many of these technologies are not especially transparent, and even their creators are not able to look at the internal workings and see how the inputs lead to the outputs. This is going to make trust and trust-enabling frameworks important to both professionals and enterprises alike.
Ashish Sidhra, Co-founder of Alike.io
2023: The year travel revival is complete in India to regain the pre-pandemic levels of 2019
“The Indian traveller has shown unprecedented zeal through 2022 to make-up for the lost travel opportunities during the pandemic lockdowns. This “revenge travel” led spike in travel of 2022 will become the yearly routine in 2023 and beyond, continuing the growth trajectory next year. As people’s memories are alive with the recreational and wellness benefits of their 2022 trips, something they are eager to repeat every year to get a reprieve from their hectic and stressful daily routines. “We will see demand for nature retreats, wellness tourism, and spiritual travel further increase in 2023, driving growth in domestic tourism in India.” said Ashish Sidhra, Co-founder of Alike.io.
“With pandemic led international travel uncertainties subsiding during the second half of 2022, the Indian traveller will seek novel international locations in 2023 to add to their trip plans. In this segment, the Indian Millennial traveller is no longer happy with cookie cutter trips and wants a personalised trip plan driven by peer recommendations. 2023 will see this urge for personalised social travel becoming an even bigger phenomenon.” he added to his comments.
“However, one of the most important Indian travel trends of 2023 will be the increased influx of foreign tourist guests to India. Foreign arrivals by July 2022 were already at 79% of 2019 levels and will surpass these historical highs next year. With India taking over the G20 Presidency, recall of brand India will grow many folds in top global source markets, driving increased international guest visits to India. The Government of India is aiming to bank on this trend and has finalised “Incredible India! Visit India Year 2023” as its marketing tagline”, asserted Ashish.
Kushang, Co-founder, and CEO of SupplyNote
“As the market is recovering from the pandemic, this year has been all about clarity for us. The business has witnessed 300 per cent Year-on-year growth in revenue, however major focus has been towards refining our offerings to further empower the F&B Industry. This year alone, we acquired a point of sale product to strengthen our SaaS offerings, pivoted our service vertical making it more pocket-flexible and solving wider problems for our customers. We also incepted a new business vertical to facilitate procurements for small to medium F&B enterprises.
As we stand today, we offer a complete stack of software and services for F&B Businesses that allows them to completely outsource their supply chain without compromising on quality and at a more efficient cost model. With this vision, we believe 2023 will be a year where we can expect substantial growth and transformation within the industry.”
Harshit Mittal, Co-founder and CTO of SupplyNote
“The Food Industry has been growing consistently for the last decade, despite the later part of the decade being the pandemic. In 2022, we have witnessed that the industry has been making a comeback and is getting stronger than ever. The technology adoption within the industry is also increasing phenomenally. There are hundreds of startups starting every year dedicated to food tech and the market is still vastly untouched. But that is all about to change.
Hemant Tathod, COO, Bimaplan
“What 2022 was all about & what will be the trends in 2023 in the Insurance/Insurtech Industry”
“Post-pandemic world is more aware of how insurance can add an extra layer of protection against financial losses incurred due to big or small hospital expenses. The integration of technology in the insurance sector has laid a strong foundation for a digitally driven and customer-centric ecosystem. This has resulted in a slight spike in the insurance penetration rising from 3.45% in 2016 to 4.2% in 2022 and we look forward to witnessing the same growth trajectory in 2023. The missing middle will be the focus area for insurtechs especially, with an objective to achieve the Indian government agenda of “Insurance for all” by 2047. Insurtechs have already started working on making affordable and curated products accessible. Further to reduce operating costs, heavy legacy architecture will be replaced by seamless digital journeys to provide instant policy issuance. IoT technologies will be used to determine risks more precisely. Digital ecosystems such as connected cars, smart housing, & connected health, are expected to gain currency. In addition, embedding and offering insurance at the right point in the customer journey to simplify the decision-making process for the customer is going to become a common practice, since it increases the relevancy of insurance products. With the multichannel, multifaced approach, customer experience is going to be enhanced especially when the customer is in the claim process phase as he expects transparent and quick communication. “
Ajay Chaurasia, Vice President: Marketing, Product & Business
“What 2022 was all about & what will be the trends in 2023 in the lending segment”
“Digital lending is transforming as the demand has increased in the last few years from the customers. This demand has increased due to ease of access to Lending and Credit from the target audiences. Post Covid the recovery has been good and more options have been offered to customers, even banks now offer Instant loans to the customers in 5 mins. So the industry is transforming very aggressively. With all the demand it got the attention of RBI and regulators in India, customers are very keen to instant credit and low amount loan as mass population in India comes from the Middle class. Due to this attention, RBI came up with new Guidelines in the month of August 2022. These guidelines were created to safeguard the customers data and regulate the industry for Fair Practices code. These guidelines will remove all the nuisances from the industry. Next year would be good for customers as well as the Digital Lending Industry as there is going to be clear guidelines to run the business and only serious players will stay in the market. Customers will get the right brand for their needs and businesses will also adjust accordingly to serve better. Digital Lending market is expanding every year and its suppose to attract more consumers in coming years as its solving problems for the middle class families.”
Krishna Veer Singh, Co-Founder, Lissun
“For the third year in a row following the Covid-19 pandemic, we have witnessed an increase in demand for anxiety and depression treatment, as well as treatment for trauma and stressor-related disorders and substance misuse disorders. Subsequently, due to the increasing mental health awareness, mental telehealth services augmented access to individuals who would otherwise be unable to receive treatment. Even more intriguing is the fact that younger generations, those between the ages of 16 and 30, are becoming more informed of the necessity to keep up with mental health issues and are seeking out ways to combat them for themselves as well as for their loved ones. For 2023, the mental health apps market is expected to grow further as they have demonstrated the ability to manage patients’ medications, reduce stress, monitor symptoms of disorders and prevent onset of serious issues”
Raman Kovelamudi, Co-Founder, InfoVision
“Post pandemic, we are seeing enterprises focus on accelerating digital transformation as a key priority. And to achieve this goal, they have been leveraging edge technologies including blockchain, AI/ML, AR/VR and Digital Twin. Businesses are experiencing the outcomes of adopting new technologies through improved efficiency, customer experience and innovation. Smarter investments by tapping into the potential of these emerging technologies will create new opportunities for companies to grow and thrive in 2023.”
Kumar Gaurav, Founder & CEO of Cashaa
Analytical views on 2022: “This year we entered the winter season in terms of cryptocurrencies, as the high-profile collapses of Terra/Luna and FTX sent shockwaves across the industry and liquidated more than $2 trillion from the total crypto market cap all-time high from November 2021.
While this events came throughout the year, some investors declared that they are done with crypto, or others, who know that these fluctuations are normal, are looking confident for the next year to come and they are preparing their investments.
We are looking confident for the coming year in terms of business opportunities. This year had the opportunity to clear up the market from scam companies, and make them take a step back and think twice if this is an industry where they want to be involved in. It is also teaching investors to have patience in terms of their investments.
For 2023 end, we are expecting a rise in the market, as new regulations are coming into place to make crypto a more secure space. However, interest rates are rising and monetary stimulus is being lowered, which is likely to produce a tougher funding environment that will narrow the field of potential investors that can win high strikes.”
Gaurav VK Singhvi, Co-Founder, We Founder Circle
“Times have changed. A decade back, angel investors were just a handful. Now, India is home to a 26,500-plus bustling angel investing community, comprising successful entrepreneurs and private investors.
In the first half of 2022, the amount of funding in Indian startups was significantly higher but it was primarily concentrated in the early and seed stages. If we look at the data around 596 early-stage startups raised funds in H1 2022 vs. the late/growth stage – which accounts only for 226 deals.
Angel investors are always going to be around – no matter the year. Early-stage startup investment remains an attractive proposition for many investors due to its exponential growth probabilities. Investors desire to garb the first come opportunity to take the stake at a reasonable valuation and reap significant returns, and exit in Series A/B rounds or later. Early-stage investors have generated around 10x, 22x, 35x to 80 times returns also. So to answer your question – angel investors are always looking for an answer to the question – is there a good company to invest in?”.
Neeraj Tyagi, CEO & Co-Founder, We Founder Circle
“2022 has seen the trend shifting from growth at all costs, to more sustainable growth. Both startup founders & investors have become cautious of high cash burn and have started focusing more on cost reducing & bringing visibility of profitability or at least making businesses unit economics right.
We are looking at a lot of course corrections in terms of team restructuring, bridge fundraising, founders cutting their own salary cuts, removing perks & focusing on core business rather than trying multiple side products. And this trend will continue in 2023 also.
There’s no denying that funding has been a slowdown for start-ups, especially at the growth stage, but funding as a whole is not going to stop. In fact, those startups that were prioritizing profitability are getting center stage & are hot favorites among investors.
The funding winter seems to be a prolonged one and would probably extend for the first half of 2023, as the global market corrects itself further in the rising interest rate environment. However, startup funding is not likely to see any imminent pause, especially for early-stage ventures. From Tier 2/3/4, a huge inflow of new angel investors is on the rise and so seed to angel stage funding will see a lot of investments and the contribution of angel investors will be the most significant in overall funding in 2023.”
Atulya Kaushik, Co-founder, and CEO of PrepInsta
There is a growing recognition that we must master our youth for the years ahead and embrace new configurable learning and development methods to guarantee they join the workforce with the best possible placement preparedness and skill sets. The edtech industry has witnessed more attraction from the B2B aspect than B2C this year. This newfound synergy has fueled growth for many upcoming players. Now beyond this point, the bull run of Ed-tech in the coming year will be determined by measures such as tax relief, the quickness with which capital is raised for the edtech industry, and how much we strengthen our digital infrastructure and cultivate positive consciousness with regards to the value it brings as a whole
Aashay Mishra, Co-founder and COO of PrepInsta
“Following the Covid-19 pandemic, the edtech sector has matured by leaps and bounds, with private industry players playing an essential role in ensuring effective and efficient delivery and learning results. India has even risen to third place in the world, after China and the United States, in terms of venture capital funding in the edtech sector. As a consequence, edtech platforms have been able to capitalize on promising technologies such as immersive learning, video-assisted remote learning, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and much more. Acquiring in-demand specialised skill sets in areas such as AI, ML, Cyber Security, C++, Python has caused a rise in student placement opportunities. Many government-supported colleges and universities have also partnered with edtech startups to provide more outcome-oriented learning. These positive observations indicate that the Ed-tech sector is not in a downward slide, but rather will experience optimum growth and capital investments for visionary shareholders”
Manish Agarwal, Co-founder and CMO of PrepInsta
“During the pandemic, the fortunes of edtech startups skyrocketed as they sneaked in to fill the vacuum left by schools and colleges closing during the country-wide clampdown. However, following the restoration of normalcy, the pandemic-driven tech surge slowed down. This even forced some edtech startups in 2022 to make even more cost cuts and look for long-term offline models with lucrative revenue streams which was not a bad move from a business standpoint. In the coming calendar year, valuations will be a higher priority for venture capitalists, and they will only consider investing in edtech platforms that have demonstrated resilience in the face of the slowdown. Given the ongoing Covid crisis and the insufficient resources available to ensure quality education and placement opportunities for all aspiring students, India is widely embracing what is currently working well in the Indian academic framework, which is web-based learning platforms”
Dr.Preet Pal Thakur, Co-founder of Glamyo Health
“At Glamyo health, we are reimagining the secondary care surgeries landscape in India. We started this company with one sole mission of solving for Indian Patients the triad of – Access, Affordability, and Quality.
Despite 3 covid waves, in the short span of 24 months, we have been able to provide free medical counseling to more than 4,00,000 patients with an NPS of 70. Over the next 12 months, we intend to disburse healthcare financing worth INR 100 Cr through our fintech partners. Our mission is to make high quality affordable secondary surgical care accessible to all”.
Archit Garg, Co-founder of Glamyo Health
“We have ended the year on a Happy Note. In Last 12 months, we have grown more than 4x in growth in terms of revenues and 4x growth in the number of patients catered to. We are continuing our vision to reach a milestone of 30+ Cities in the coming year and create a chain of 1000 + Surgical centers and touch the lives of 1,00,000+ patients over the next 12 months.”
Sujata Pawar, Co-Founder & CEO at Avni- A Feminine Hygiene and Menstrual Healthcare Startup
“The year 2022 has been a big boost to my journey as a woman entrepreneur as Avni is a women-led brand working for women’s health. I have seen immense support right from customers supporting more women-led brands, various e-commerce platforms and accelerators offering specific programs for women entrepreneurs, and our stories being amplified organically in the media.
A recent study says four out of five women in India want to start their own businesses, however, the conversion rate is not that high. I am sure this picture will change as we have more success stories, and role models, increasing investor confidence and a boost in the infrastructure in the coming year.”
Kajal Malik, Co-Founder & CSO of PickMyWork- A Gig Platform
“The entire ecosystem- the founders, the funders, the government of India, the enablers – everyone has recognized the importance of women in entrepreneurship and is working hard to bridge the gap. Initiatives like Bharathiya Mahila Bank Business Loan, Mudra Yojana Scheme, Google startup Accelerator, NSRCEL, and many more will have a positive impact on women’s entrepreneurship at every level. The participation of women in the labor force has helped millions of families pull out of poverty and has led to job creation. In India, 20.37% of women are MSME owners which accounts for 23.3% of the labor force. They are considered to be the backbone of the economy.
To reach exponential growth in the coming few years we are still laying the foundations. Every year is a year of these incremental efforts and I believe that every effort (big or small) will make a difference in this decade. At the top level, we are aware that it is extremely important to have women as a part of the formal workforce to push our nation’s GDP, it is important to create that awareness at every level, in every city or village so that every scheme, every effort that we make actually leads to the desired result.”
Harini Ramachandran, Co-Creator of Excellence Installations Technology and Co-founder of Antano & Harini, Legacy Accelerators.
“2022 posed its own set of challenges for women entrepreneurs, amongst others. Indeed, most of them have splendidly progressed in this journey in 2022, although with great struggle. One of the most significant agendas of 2023 is to get a complete & clean reset from the struggle and get the mind & the body to feel lighter to soar to new altitudes, not just in the same range. It is pivotal, thus, to do the prep required mentally, physically, strategically and from a capabilities perspective, to take the Big Leap ahead and accelerate their success. Capabilities like Predictive Intelligence, Ecosystem Engineering, Sustained Creative High on-demand, striking collaborative brilliance on-demand, etc are going to be pivotal in 2023, especially for Women Entrepreneurs. In 2023, I see women entrepreneurs leverage the power of Technology like Excellence Installation to accelerate their personal evolution and be more daring, and capable, and push the boundaries of what they considered possible. This is also the year, where I see women developing rapidly targeted capabilities to Build their Business, Health, Family, and Legacy (impact), all together. Simultaneously.”
Vidyarthi Baddireddy- CEO and Co-founder at PickMyWork
“A Gig startup- Industry-specific Analytical views on 2022
In 2022, the gig ecosystem’s fast expansion and readiness have unleashed a remarkable appetite for scalability, alternative funding offerings, expansion into the Indian market, and the potential to cultivate millions of jobs. The investment figures, which gradually plunged from the onset of the global Covid-19 pandemic, began to recoup as start-ups as well as clients widely embraced digital services. Gig platforms played a huge role as start-ups recognized the value of hiring gig workers for both skilled and unskilled jobs to save on overhead expenses.
A Gig startup- Expectations for 2023
Amidst modifications in working habits with the young workforce searching for adaptability, digital platforms will stand out as the unique enabler for employment creation in 2023. The gig economy in 2023 will also encompass both structured jobs that have benefited from gig platforms as well as new jobs being established in the marketplace. As stakeholders will seek greater Return on Investment (ROI) from start-ups in the face of changing consumer behaviour and a funding drought, the implementation of a gig workforce will offer distinctive advantages. Additionally, gig platforms can assist start-ups in expanding their campaigns into Tier II and Tier III cities in order to broaden their clientele and gross margins.”
Aditya Reddy, VP, Sales & Marketing, EVeium Smart Mobility
“The market is flooded with Low speed EV’s which create a negative impression of a sort of inability of EV’s to match with fuel based. EVeium provides if not equal better mileage than an ICE. With our per charge distance being 150Km, it is remarkable what a single charge of the battery can provide. As the Indian market is very competitive and full of ideas, we are constantly boosting our research to upgrade our technology in keeping up with the demands of the customer while keeping in mind regulation of the pricing. The EV market is here to stay, the public has given in approval and consent to seek sustainable changes in mobility. EVeium will uphold those demands to the fullest in providing affordable, smart and sustainable 2-wheeler mobility all over the nation.”
Muzammil Riyaz, Founder & Partner, EVeium Smart Mobility
“We are in a race against time to provide solutions that sustainably impact the environment. The transport sector, and more specifically the 2-wheeler sector is the most common means of commute in India. Electrifying this means to reduce fossil fuel consumption in a major way. EVeium wants to provide customers with EV’s that are smarter and more efficient than their ICE counterparts. As EV providers we have an upper edge in the Sustainable solutions domain, and we aim to take this higher in means of affordability and availability. Demand for green-mobility solutions is at an all-time high and we mean to satisfy it!
We have showrooms in multiple destinations opening up in a very short amount of time due to demand and confidence in EVeium. It boosts our confidence seeing this public demand for EV’s and we continue our R&D to develop them more financially feasible. Plans are in place for 2023 more showrooms opening in different parts of the country. It is an exciting time for us to see EVeium expand nationally in such a short duration since its launch.”
Mukesh Taneja Co-founder & CEO of GT Force
“The electric scooter market in India has seen phenomenal growth over the last few years, with the number of registered e-scooters increasing by a staggering 14.5 times since 2019. This strong growth has been driven by a number of factors, from government policies to consumer demand, Moreover various government initiatives and consumer trends that have played a major role in the growth of the e-scooter market in India. This will continue in 2023 and will make India hub of green revolution in upcoming years.”.
Rajesh Saitya Co-founder & COO of GT Force
“As we are going to see economic downfall which will result in the rising price of gasoline and diesel fuel eventually people will be coming up with a new transformation in the field of automobiles. Resulting in the great shift on electric vehicles, which will be environmentally friendly also they are comparatively cheaper to operate and execute. The fact that more people are becoming aware of the advantages of electric vehicles and the government’s initiatives to boost investment in renewable energy sources are two of the main drivers of this expansion”.
Sudarshan Lodha, Cofounder & CEO, Strata Property Management
“Indian real estate has witnessed a boom in 2022 with a fillip in commercial and residential space construction and absorption. After two years of pandemic-instilled lockdowns and consequent economic slowdown, the year witnessed a fresh infusion of institutional and retail investors into the real estate segment. As demand soared, the year has already seen triple-digit growth in the office and retail segments. With the country emerging as a global manufacturing hub after multinational conglomerates moved out of China, it remains under a positive forecast lens. The ever-rising IT sector and boom in e-commerce led to a paradigm shift in the demand for commercial real estate (CRE) spaces. While the top metros witnessed significant growth in development and consumption, the traction in Tier II cities was also eminent. It is mainly due to the initiatives like Smart Cities Mission and AMRUT (Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation).
We expect the trend to continue and bolster in 2023, with increased absorption and decreased vacancy rates, strong ROI, more considerable NRI and FDI investment and solidified government initiatives helping infrastructural boost leading to growth in the office space segment. We foresee more traction in Tier-II towns with the rise in employment opportunities and economic activities in these markets. Additionally, with a behavioural shift towards digitization, we will see more people investing in commercial assets through fractional routes. Overall, real estate will remain one of the ideal investment asset classes, and as the pandemic has faded, the commercial market looks to bloom in major cities of the country.”
Yogita Tulsiani, Director and Co-founder, iXceed Solutions
“As organisations prepare to enter a new fiscal year, HRs are pushing their limits to deal with the labour market’s post-Covid effects.” The year 2022, when the markets reopened completely, remained a difficult time for the recruiting industry in terms of managing, retaining, and reskilling their employees. The health and financial crises, the Great Recession, and the War for Talent are the leading causes in 2022 that shifted priorities and created new job roles at workplaces. However, in 2022, we can expect to see an increase in hiring despite layoffs and an increase in the remote work culture.
But in 2023, we will be witness to some changes in HR, like the adoption of diversity and inclusion strategies for their workplaces, the data-driven culture as a part of the new business strategy, and advancements in the HR industry like cloud-based HR processes, virtual reality in recruitment and training, AI-integrated HR analytics, and many more”
Adit Jain, Co-Founder, and CEO, Leena AI
“Over the past couple of years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has advanced tremendously and transformed our lives. AI has many forms – through voice assistants like Alexa/Siri, through chatbots resolving queries, and even conversational AI tools that communicate with businesses and employees. Needless to say, there is a growing preference for AI-enabled virtual assistants. In India, AI-generated revenue in 2022 stands at $12.3bn, and the market is expected to grow by 42% to $71bn by 2027[AT(1] .
As 2023 approaches, businesses are leveraging conversational AI to engage with their customers and employees to provide high-end experiences. We will see a rise in demand for differentiated virtual assistants catering to specific business/function needs. For example, a virtual assistant for HR functions like Leena AI can help in simplifying hiring, automating employee onboarding/offboarding practices and more, to provide better employee experiences. Another trend we expect to see is the rise of contextual understanding and sentiment analysis by AI. With the usage of Natural-Language Processor (NLP) and Natural-Language Generation (NLG), virtual assistants will be able to comprehend discussions better and improve the quality of their response, thereby providing exceptional personalized services and experiences.”
Ankur Mittal, SVP Technology and Managing Director at Lowe’s India
The growing preference for and access to digital shopping has made it critical for businesses to devise effective omnichannel strategies. Call it a master trend or a prerequisite for businesses in the years to come, but every innovation and technical architectural decision that we see in 2023 will be rooted in the objective of building a cohesive and unified omnichannel experience for customer.
I see a few key trends that will accelerate innovation in retail in 2023. Firstly, leveraging new-age tech such as the metaverse and Web3 to give customers a safe, immersive shopping experience and equip them to make the right purchase decisions. For instance, we will see more innovation in spatial commerce that leverages the power of AR/VR, 3D visualization, space measurement etc. as we know, the future of retail is immersive and interactive. This will bring brands much closer to the customer right from the idea/inspiration stage through purchase, to implementatio
Secondly, the ability to build an integrated, agile and flexible tech stack to solve customer problems will define business growth. Businesses will use technology to optimize expenses and boost outcomes. In similar context, augmenting the readiness of associates who are at the forefront of serving customers, with the right tools and insights will make a significant difference in curating memorable customer journeys. Innovation in personalization engines, inventory management, space planning, visual analytics, data intelligence, supply chain, in-store and online merchandizing strategies, check-out experiences, etc. – everything will continue to evolve to become smarter, intuitive and AI-driven. In a nutshell, an undisrupted year of retail innovation could take us leaps closer to a future with in-store robotics, NFTs and immersive commerce.
At Lowe’s we are already infusing new technologies right from planning to the shopping experience of our customers, while embracing a solid platform strategy to enable business agility and a vendor-agnostic approach to solving business problems. We are excited to see many of our tech advancements in spatial commerce, our pioneering digital twin, etc. unlock new possibilities for the business.
Anmol Bohre, Managing Director of Enigma
“The electric two-wheeler industry has been progressively gaining momentum in recent years, and it has also made national headlines due to the obvious advantages it entails. In 2022, this sector also witnessed intense competition, which primarily compelled EV brands to deliver high-quality products at affordable prices. The market also experienced tectonic shifts as an outcome of the implementation of the new battery standards under AIS 156. The year 2022, therefore, belongs to the companies that put in the efforts to advance their research and development.
For the coming year, EV players will further advance their R&D activities. The priority however will be the widespread deployment of charging stations as the growth of an EV brand is disproportionately dependent on it. Overall, it is safe to predict that the nationwide adoption of electric two-wheelers is bound to take place in years to come not only because the segment is largely backed by government initiatives and the preferred choice of common Indians but it is technologically more intelligent to ink more power from a battery than other EV subgroups.”
Vidyarthi Baddireddy- CEO and Co-founder at PickMyWork
Priyadarshini Nigam is Head CSR at Newgen Software
“2022 was a year where Newgen CSR’s flagship program, Newgen Digital Discovery Paathshala, scaled new heights. We implemented a hybrid model to conduct digital education sessions at the adopted government schools, impacting over 3000 students. Also, we provided 1200+ students with devices to facilitate digital learning.
In 2023, we will continue with the hybrid model to facilitate the sessions. We plan to engage extensively with the schools’ teachers and students’ parents. Our teachers’ group, Samarth Shikshaks, offers valuable feedback that will help us make our sessions more effective and engaging. Also, we are creating a group for school pass-outs called Maarg Darshakh to help us execute our role model program.
Our implementation partner organizations have enabled us to cater to the country’s remote locations and will help us expand our reach further. With KHUSHII, we are impacting over 10,000 students. Similarly, with Akshay Patra Foundation, we are providing over a million mid-day meals. In the upcoming year, we will strengthen our programs and strive to impact more lives.
Overall, we believe that organizations have a great opportunity to contribute to the development of society through various CSR initiatives. They must define a focus area to plan their CSR program and execute them effectively. With a sustainable CSR strategy, corporates can generate value in the long run. “
