Government, healthcare, retail, supply chain and logistics, manufacturing and financial services will see an explosion in cloud adoption in India. We expect the Indian cloud market to see unprecedented growth of 24% in the coming year. Indian enterprises adopting public cloud have spent an average of ₹3.7 billion on it in the past 12 months. In Forrester’s Infrastructure Cloud Survey, 2022, 73% of Indian enterprise cloud decision-makers using at least two cloud deployment models say they use hybrid cloud; 85% of those using public cloud use two or more vendors.

Key observations about the Indian cloud market include:

  • Public clouds will remain in demand with both large and medium-sized enterprises.
  • Startups in India tend to have a cloud-only policy and generally don’t have any applications or platforms in house.
  • Enterprises planning for tech modernization or application portfolio rationalization adopt a cloud-first or cloud-only approach.
  • Partners are key to success for large cloud migrations in Indian enterprises.
  • Cloud-native technologies are the new normal for Indian enterprises.
  • Banks have been leading in migrating to hyperscalers. For example, Axis bank announced plans to migrate 70% of their on-premises infrastructure to AWS.

So, what does the future of the Indian cloud market look like?

  • While FinOps is still very new in India, it’ll see major traction in the next 12 months. Cloud service providers are helping Indian enterprises to get on the FinOps bandwagon by releasing accelerated adoption roadmaps. These include helping in core capabilities like efficient cost allocations and reporting, building architectural efficiency and driving accountability throughout the system.
  • Hyperscalers, along with service providers, will roll out custom generative AI-enabled services. For example, TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) in partnership with Google announced the launch of a new offering – TCS Generative AI. Similarly, Wipro announced the launch of its own generative AI solution, also in partnership with Google. Mphasis announced its new business unit, mphasis.ai, which aims to integrate existing infrastructure solutions from leading hyperscalers with AI capabilities.
  • Industry clouds will see greater adoption. There are few industry cloud offerings available in India now. However, MSMEs are keen to adopt them, as they help them leapfrog the digital journey. There’s a lot of potential for manufacturing, logistics, insurance, retail, and healthcare industry clouds in India. With more than 63 million SMEs, industry clouds catering to those markets will gain a lot of traction.

Refer to our report The State Of Cloud In India, 2023 | Forrester for more information.