What businesses hope for in 2022

The following is an industry article featuring Eddie Chandhok, that appeared in IndiaTV on 4 January 2022. Follow the link to read the original article. 

The pandemic challenge continued in 2021 too which pushed businesses to find at par solutions to achieve their targets, predict the right trends, manage funds and also expand at the same time. Now when we have entered 2022 which has too arrived with the third wave looming around, let's take a look at what heads of different business organisations have to say about challenges they faced in 2021 and their hope for the future.

Eddie Chandhok, Head of Global Delivery, Operations, and M&A at Infogain

"The pandemic had already stress-tested businesses, but the second wave of Covid-19 shook the economy further, worsening the existing vulnerabilities. However, the IT industry witnessed a substantial growth. According to a study by IBEF, the IT & business service industry’s revenue was estimated at US $6.96 billion in the first half of 2021, an increase of 6.4% YoY. It was a significant year for Infogain wherein we announced PE ownership transition to APAX funds as well as acquired Nggawe Nirman Technologies (NNT).

In the last one year, cloud services have been a crucial cornerstone not only for Infogain but businesses across the IT industry. Gartner forecasts that end-user spending on public cloud services will reach $482 billion in 2022. Thus, adding cloud-native app development expert NNT is a strategic decision aimed at enhancing our expertise in building AWS cloud-native applications.

Further, managing talent and building leadership was a major focus for Infogain in 2021. The addition of NNT has taken our global employee base to over 6,000. In addition, we have been hiring aggressively from campuses to add fresh perspectives. Over 400 young engineering graduates joined us this year.”

Krishnan Ramachandran, MD, and CEO, Niva Bupa

"2021 has been one of the most challenging years for the health insurance sector as the industry grappled with the after effects of Covid and the havoc caused by the second wave. This was a time when insurance players came together in unison to support customers to tide through the crisis. Niva Bupa paid Covid claims worth Rs 409 crore to around 30,000 customers nationwide.

2021 was also a landmark year for the brand as we successfully transitioned from Max Bupa to Niva Bupa. The brand has consolidated its position with steady growth of 41% in FY21, strongly achieving over 70% growth YTD in the current financial year and targeting Rs 5,000 crore Gross Written Premium by FY 23-24. Niva Bupa has attained this growth by aggressively expanding its direct and digital partnerships, massive focus on regional expansion, robust digitization and tech infrastructure and smart choice of launching comprehensive and segment specific products which are also category leaders."

"Through our latest brand campaign, our aim is to revamp the positioning of health insurance category, to be an enabler in people’s lives. With the new brand identity, our purpose is to build a humane brand, to democratize health insurance and work towards making quality healthcare more accessible to people across all segments. We are fully committed to accelerate the adoption of health insurance across the country.”

Dr Rishi Mohan Bhatnagar, President at Aeris Communications

“The pandemic has proved to be a catalyst in the adoption of innovative technologies that have ramped up the speed of digital transformation in the country. Organizations are heavily investing in these new-age technologies to transform their business processes, stay competitive and maintain business resilience. In the past couple of months, the Internet of Things is one such technology that has witnessed a positive growth in its adoption. It has emerged as a key enabler in shifting the mode of interaction between intelligent solutions and other objects and will continue to grow in 2022.

He believes some of the trends that could be witnessed in 2022 are:

Welcoming the era of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV): We can expect to see the IoV becoming the future of Electric Vehicles, wherein a network of vehicles will be able to communicate freely with other intelligent devices Connected Technologies in Education- As the virtual world continues to be a huge part of our day-to-day lives, we can further expect the integration of new-age technologies in education for an immersive virtual learning experience.

Enhanced IoT and AI-powered solutions like Claerityai, which seamlessly integrates with various collaboration tools like Zoom, teams, etc, can further enhance the overall classroom experience Enhancing Healthcare with Tech. Through the integration of IoT led solutions, healthcare professionals will further be able to provide support to at-home patients, leading to better customer experience and reduced costs being incurred by care receivers

Increased focus on Edge Computing. As the quantity of data being generated continues to increase, we can expect to see a rise in the demand for real-time insights. In this regard, edge computing will play a key role in unlocking opportunities for those who want to maximize operational efficiency and improve performance.

Samit Banerjee, Division President, Amdocs

With exponential growth in digitalization, industries are adapting to virtual methods for running their business. Service providers are proactively developing zero touch operations to improve their operational efficiency and customer experience by reducing human interaction. For CSPs, Zero Touch Operations means automating each phase of operations and usage of AI to predict patterns of anomaly & implement auto healing as per different operational scenarios. The fully automated system would significantly reduce the OSS and BSS operational cost and improve time to market, service quality & customer satisfaction.

Pankaj Sachdeva, Vice President, Innovation and India Site Leader at Pitney Bowes

As Cloud, Data, and AI continue to enable newer and stronger use cases, digital concepts such as Metaverse, Connected Health, & Smarter Robotics are likely to see a major uptick in 2022.

Owing to the current hybrid work model and an increased focus by leading companies, Social Reality is finally coming to the foreground. As our world becomes more virtually connected, we can expect to see more use cases of Metaverse in our lives. Across industries, we saw an imbalance of supply and demand last year. While consumer demand has risen back to its previous highs, supply chains are still disrupted. We foresee companies to start leveraging Industrial Automation and Smarter Robotics technologies as an alternative to human workforce.

To accomplish these futuristic use cases, companies are looking at acceleration and agility. Achieving this high rate of digitization would be possible through concepts such as Low code/No code, MLOps (DevOps for ML), & 5G, deployed as enabling technologies.

In healthcare, we are witnessing diverse industry players come together through partnerships, acquisitions, & collaborative efforts, to build a ‘Connected Healthcare’ ecosystem. Major tech giants are planning to launch extensive portfolios of clinical-grade smart medical devices such as a sensor-equipped smartwatch, HIPAA-compliant voice assistant for aggregation of health data to diagnose & prevent immune system disorders, heart rhythm irregularities, among others.