Trends and Predictions 2022 | ChannelDrive.in
Even though, the year 2021 was overshadowed by the challenges that come with an ongoing pandemic era – at the same time, it is quite safe to say that year 2021 was also the year of rapid digital transformation, mass acceptance of cloud technologies, blockchain, AI and cybersecurity.
Year 2022 holds great promise to further drive business and consumer opportunities with tech disruptions. Here is how the technology industry is expecting the year 2022 to be.
Rajiv Bhalla, MD, Barco India
The year 2021 will always stand out as the year organisations and people adapted to the hybrid lifestyle. The beginning of a disruptive new decade marked by innovative solutions, technological advancements, and resilient organisations driven by visionary leaders, 2021 taught us many lessons. The tech industry has outdone itself, designing new solutions to take on even the most insidious of pandemic challenges and we should hold these lessons close as we move into the new year.
The pandemic has highlighted one thing, for sure, an organisation is only as effective as its employees, and leaders must adopt a people-first approach in all their policies. As we embark on another revolution around the sun, let us put our heads together and work towards solutions which are sustainable and responsible. 2021 is the year we learned to adapt, let 2022 be the year we flourish as we focus unwaveringly on business resilience and optimal leadership.
Rajesh Dhuddu, VP & Practice Leader Blockchain & Cybersecurity Tech Mahindra
The accelerated integration of technology in business operations and workflows, along with increased adoption of Work from Home (WFH) model, have resulted in a surge in cyberthreats and attacks. Malicious threats from outside and within organizations, coupled with increasingly stringent data regulations, have made cybersecurity a C-suite level issue.
Acknowledging this, organizations are focusing on re-evaluating their IT strategy ensuring an end-to-end, robust, and strategic infrastructure design based on Zero trust architecture to improve overall infrastructure security posture of business and network security lifecycles alike. Using low-code automation to harness collective knowledge and form a secure, centralized system of data records, to simplify operational systems and enable a cohesive view of things, is rapidly becoming the functional norm.
Rohit Khetan, Head Marketing & Strategy, Ginesys
The retail landscape will continue to evolve at a rapid pace in 2022. Post pandemic challenges and opportunities will be technology-driven with a deeper and real-time understanding of consumer trends and demand. Digitization has led to an increase in demand for integration of offline retail stores or pre-integration and online web stores and channels for a better omnichannel experience.
Another trend we foresee is the gradual democratization of retail intelligence to benefit mid-size companies and SMEs. Increasingly people are using AI to drive customer behaviour at scale leveraging digital footprints. This includes using interest and social media footprints to subtly push customers to try certain products/ webstores. Industry data suggests that marketers will see an average increase of 10-20% in sales when using personalized experiences. Digital payments across retail formats like UPI are now at around 10% of retail transactions and only growing. Combined with credit cards, this is set to eclipse cash as the payment system of choice. Last but not the least, self-checkout is going to be a much-implemented feature across mid to large stores as costs to deploy this technology gradually reduce.
Neetish Sarda, Founder, Smartworks
Managed office spaces will continue to grow, given the value, agility, and flexibility it offers to the occupiers. The year started slowly, but the demand for fully managed office spaces gradually increased, with us signing major multi-city deals with large companies. We also added close to a million sq. ft. area to our overall portfolio. With hybrid offices and work arrangements taking centre stage, managed office spaces have gained significant popularity and have become an integrated part of portfolio strategy for enterprises.
2022 will see a complete transformation of offices into smart and dynamic spaces that incorporate the latest technologies to facilitate better workspace management and experience with data-driven decisions. Office experience has become more critical in the ‘new normal’ than ever, so a lot of focus will be on implementing the right tech solutions in workspaces for real-time insights on space optimisation and utilisation, leading to overall efficiency.
Agendra Kumar, Managing Director, Esri India
As we welcome 2022, a wave of concern due to the new strain of COVID-19 yet again reiterates – the importance of being “geo-aware” to contextualize environmental, social, and economic systems for a safer and healthier society, and emphasizes the significance of “Preparing Strategically, Responding Rapidly and Recovering Methodically”. In spite of numerous challenges, 2021 has been a landmark year for the geospatial industry. While on one side the “geo-awareness” and “spatial thinking” surged to all time high, we also witnessed major strides by the government through new policies like Geospatial Data Guidelines, Drone Policy, Draft National Geospatial Policy 2021, among others.
These make 2022 look very promising and as the geospatial technologies get subsumed into the enterprise IT architectures, GIS takes centre stage in new converged environments to help organizations unearth better economic, social, and environmental value and higher return on their investments.
Technological advances have pushed geospatial applications to newer heights, especially in the year 2021. While the technology supercharged normal business intelligence with a geographic component that allowed a holistic situational awareness, providing real-time insights into operations and systems, it also enabled us to fight COVID-19, from an interdisciplinary perspective, with proactive planning, international solidarity and a global perspective. Now, as the geospatial technologies are getting subsumed into the enterprise IT architectures, GISl is taking centre stage in new converged environments to help organizations unearth better economic, social, and environmental value and higher returns on their investments. The rapid rate of GIS adoption in the past year has indeed laid a strong foundation for the dawn of a new “Geo-Enabled Era” that will foster inclusivity, sustainability, and resilience in the future.
Anku Jain, Managing Director, MediaTek India
MediaTek expects 2022 to be a year of disruptive technological advancements. We are eyeing an array of developments, from the possibility of 5G deployment and spread of Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things to the continued boom in the semiconductor industry and quicker proliferation of smart devices. As a global fabless semiconductor company powering nearly 2 billion devices per year and spearheading technology democratization, we are keen to be at the forefront of this revolution.
We expect the pandemic-accelerated momentum in technology to continue in 2022 and believe that semiconductors will be at the heart of transformative progress across industries. While we have always focused on developing and expanding our R&D capabilities, 2022 will be especially important as we take decisive steps to mark our position at the top of the semiconductor chart. We are eyeing strong and sustainable growth in the Indian ecosystem and are hiring robustly to achieve this goal. For 2022, our R&D centers are working on updating all our innovative technologies while also diversifying our portfolio into segments such as edge Internet of Things solutions and seamless design execution. We are also lining up innovations in the smart device segment and MediaTek customers have a great deal to look forward to in the new year.
Nipun Jain, CEO, RapiPay
For RapiPay, year 2021 has been a very successful year. Despite the challenges thrown by Covid second wave, we grew more than 100% over last year. Other than achieving business numbers, we also grew our presence in deeper geographies and far-flung areas. We saw Micro ATMs gain traction from both retailers as well as end consumers. With over 1 lakh RapiPay Micro ATMs installed, we constitute around 25% of the Micro ATM market.
Today, RapiPay has a strong retail network of 4 Lakh Direct Business Outlets and growing with transactions over 1 million daily. In 2022 also, we will continue to expand our suite of banking and payments services for our DBOs/retailers. We believe in 2022 we will witness more partnership between Fintech companies and Banks to provide various banking and financial services and widen their reach. RapiPay will continue its efforts of taking banking services to the last mile, so that Indian population can use safe, secure, and convenient banking services. With more funding and increased collaboration between established and new players in the payments and neo banking space, the outlook for the Fintech sector looks promising and very positive this year also.
Rakesh Jain, CEO, Reliance General Insurance Co. Ltd.
“In 2022, the Business transformation will be led by technological transformation. Tie-ups with fintech/insurtech partners will be imperative to bring the uninsured population into the insurance ecosystem and make insurance accessible to everyone in every corner of the country. Additionally, we need to focus on customized risk solutions to address the customers’ evolving requirements better. Distribution is going to be customer-centric to make the process simple, hassle-free and fast.”
HCL Foundation
India faced unprecedented challenges during the second wave of the pandemic. During this testing time, corporate philanthropy assumed more significance than ever and played a critical part in helping individuals and communities get through difficult times. HCL, through all its entities, significantly ramped up its efforts to mitigate the humanitarian crisis. HCL proactively collaborated with the national and local governments and communities to meet the needs on the ground.
This year, as HCL Foundation (HCLF) celebrated 10 years of stewardship and impact, HCL Technologies also revised its Corporate Social Responsibility Policy document to further reaffirm its commitment to the Global Sustainable Development Goals as well as the National Missions. While HCL, as a group, coordinated efforts to fight the pandemic, HCLF also remained committed to the CSR mandate of ensuring holistic integrated development of communities and meeting highest standards of environmental sustainability. HCLF continued to impact 2.14 million lives, brought 52,000+ acres land under community governance, and rejuvenated 82 water bodies with footprints across 21 States, 3 Union Territories and 122 Districts from rural and urban geographies of India.
Standing firmly against exploitation of natural resources, HCLF recognized the growing need to invest in environment action and ecosystem conservation. Consequently, HCL Harit – the green initiative, was launched as a distinct flagship programme to ramp up efforts towards creation of a greener and more sustainable future. After successfully demonstrating models of rural transformation across 3 blocks in Hardoi district of Uttar Pradesh, HCL Samuday scaled its reach to 11 blocks. While the HCL Grant partners continued working across remote rural geographies to seed sustainable transformative models and solutions in environment, health and education, HCL Grant also announced the roll-out of its seventh edition. With innovation at its core, HCL Uday’s strategy started taking root and creating models of urban transformation across thematic areas. HCLF in partnership with various stake holders and NGO partners inaugurated various key initiatives and programmes across the 11 HCL Uday cities . HCL Foundation was also felicitated by Smt. Anandiben Patel, Governor of Uttar Pradesh, in recognition of its effort towards transforming 76 Anganwadi centers across Gautam Buddha Nagar into ‘vibrant centers’. In addition, Clean NOIDA’s efforts to revolutionize the Solid Waste Management System and make NOIDA into a visibly cleaner, helped the city become the cleanest medium city of India, as per the Swachh Survekshan 2021.
Sports for Change, HCL Foundation’s special initiative to promote grassroots sports also saw various achievements this year as many of our athletes’ won laurels at National and International Games. Under Power of One, HCLites continued by contributing digitally as well as engaging with communities on-ground for various community development and environment conservation related activities. With virtual learning taking prominence, HCL Foundation Academy played a significant role in keeping the sector connected and facilitating exchange of knowledge. HCLF also launched a new special initiative, ‘My E-Haat’, to strengthen the value chain of the Arts & Crafts sector and create a level-playing field for artisans.
Vishal Agrawal, MD, Avaya India & SAARC
Recovery from Covid-19 has resulted in quick technological advancements and a dramatic transformation of digital experiences over the last several months. As organisations and lifestyles change swiftly, reliance on technology has increased, and radical alternatives have replaced traditional technology. Organizations no longer compete just on the basis of products or services; instead, they compete on the basis of seamless, personalised, connected, and intuitive experiences that are remembered.
Going forward, we will see greater emphasis on AI, machine learning, and cloud technologies being incorporated into many industries such as healthtech, edutech, fintech, and others, as well as automated contact centres that will further enhance customer experiences. Large firms will also make small infrastructure expenditures as they prepare their organisations for a hybrid workforce by digitally transforming their workforce and developing future workspaces.
Vaibhav Kshatriya, Director, Channels & Services Sales, Avaya
Organisations have understood that increasing the quality of customer and employee experiences is one of the most critical differentiators and promoters of brand affinity today. Although the operational efficiency stood at a standstill for most of the organizations, industry leaders and technology enthusiasts were able to leverage new-age tech and develop innovative solutions to build resilience among businesses. Companies are recognising that monolithic programmes can’t meet people’s demands in the cloud, and that experiences must be ‘composed’ for “everything customers”. Therefore, going forward, companies will develop A Value-driven channel systems with the support of a cloud application ecosystem designed to empower the digital workplace and give “everything customers” a ‘composed’ experience.
Akshay Munjal, Founder and CEO, Hero Vired
The pandemic has catalysed the role of ed-tech in democratising quality education at scale. Ed-tech is reimagining learning through data analytics, immersive and emerging technologies. The coming year will witness the penetration of these trends, with user experience at the heart of the learning process. Collaborations among various education and ed-tech organisations along with industry-academia partnerships will see a significant uptick to bridge the skill gap. Technology will play a pervasive role in boosting engagement and redefining learning outcomes as companies like Hero Vired continue to reimagine education through new-age programs curated in line with industry requirements.
The inaugural year has been fantastic for us. Since our inception in April 2021, we have grown to 140+ members and concluded crème de la crème collaborations with MIT, LaLiga, NSDC, Singularity University and more. In less than nine months, we have branched out into three core verticals – B2C, B2B, where we provide up-skilling and re-skilling solutions to businesses, and B2I, wherein we provide solutions to higher education institutions. We have clocked a phenomenal 30% month-on-month revenue growth and a monthly run rate of ~5 Cr.
For 2022, we have a three-pronged plan that focuses on strategic acquisitions, international expansion and people. We are looking at acquiring companies with a great content/faculty/ specialised content pool. We are also exploring partnerships with the world’s best educational institutions. Geographically, we are targeting expansion across India as well as in Asia and Africa. We are also looking to increase our headcount by 3.5x times. We will continue to invest in our people and provide special benefits, such as a bi-annual appraisal, ESOP, and more.
