SAP India reports a surge in AI adoption among SMBs, with 96% prioritizing next-gen AI. The market is a “melting pot of innovation, scale, and execution,” driven by a growing technology landscape.
The German company – whose software is used by some of the world’s largest and most famous companies to streamline business processes from inventory management to supply chains – is writing a “phenomenal story” in India, SAP Indian Subcontinent President and Managing Director Manish Prasad told PTI in an interview, describing the market as a “melting pot of innovation, scale and execution”.
The Indian market is growing at a faster pace than expected, Prasad said, adding that small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which are an important part of it, are giving high priority to AI.
A technology veteran and seasoned business leader, Prasad leads SAP’s growth and innovation strategies in the Indian subcontinent.
“We are extremely bullish on the adoption and consumption of technology… India is one of the fastest growing markets, and that kind of reflects what is happening in the country. So that element is very well established,” he said.
SAP India started operations in 1996 and today caters to both large enterprises and SMEs. According to Prasad, the demand is there across sectors.
“We passionately say that 60% of India’s GDP is tied to SAP in one form or the other. But our story doesn’t end there. I think in the last few years, we have doubled down on what we call our mid-market segment. Today, if you look closely, about eight out of our 10 customers are primarily from the mid-market,” he said.
SMEs are striving to accelerate their growth through technology and are keen to embrace the transformative power of AI.
“…they also need to make sure that they have a lot of talent to accelerate that growth. And that’s where the impact of technology starts to come in, right? Because when you integrate enterprise AI and you make it work with human capital, I think that’s where the efficiencies start to come in. So it’s also about scale and speed, and the only way for SMEs to address that is probably to combine the two,” he said.
According to SAP’s latest AI study for mid-sized businesses, 96% of Indian companies with 250-1,500 employees are prioritizing generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI), ahead of the rest of the world (91%). The survey polled 12,003 companies globally, including 800 in India.
More than half of mid-sized Indian businesses surveyed place a high priority on AI to transform privacy and security (55%) and improve decision-making (52%), ahead of businesses in the rest of the world (50% and 49%, respectively).
Indian mid-sized companies are also prioritizing AI to improve training and skills development (51%), customer experience (50%), and to optimize supply chains and logistics (50%).
With India offering a large and growing pool of skilled STEM resources, SAP is also stepping up efforts to attract talent to the country.
“…you’ve probably heard about the R&D capabilities that we have through SAP Labs…there’s a lot of product development, a lot of product engineering that’s happening in India, where we take input from Indian customers…across the region…in Asia Pacific and Japan and even from a global footprint perspective,” he said.
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