Accelerated digitalization to be the key trend to watch across digital ecosystem

New Year’s resolutions are not only for individuals but businesses too. Company goals the leaders set for the year ahead are usually measured in data tied to categories like revenue production and expense reduction. Indian ICT sector will continue to soar in 2021 by riding on the waves of digital transformation starting from e-education, deep tech start-ups and newer opportunities into new IT enabled opportunities in the automobile and the energy sectors. With the COVID pandemic happened, an unprecedented economic decline followed all over the country with huge impact on India, but the Indian IT services companies and B2B tech startups have delivered on the promise. This is an industry which continues to flourish. With all good things done by this sector, 2021 will be the first year of this decade to be the truly accelerated path of achievement.

In India, where 70% of the schools are run by the government, the impact of the pandemic has been severe on students. But even as millions of children in the country were left with no access to learning last year, the ed-tech space was bustling as demand for online classes exploded amid the pandemic-triggered lockdown. This has once again brought the age-old debate over free education for all to the forefront. Secondly, when we saw the media and entertainment segment, TV advertising won’t recover what it lost in 2020. One of the biggest casualties of the pandemic was television advertising, as big marketers shifted money from TV commercials to social media apps like Snap and Facebook. But even assuming the pandemic ends this year with widespread vaccination it is predicted that TV advertising in 2021 won’t regain all it lost.

While the pandemic brought in multiple challenges, it also provided an unmatched opportunity for leaders and organisations to lead this change and build workplaces that will thrive in uncertainty. Small retailers and businesses survived the global pandemic that plagued 2020 on the back of rapid digitisation by relying on platforms which helped them power e-commerce, deploy touchless payments and so much more.

Although there has been an easier access to formal-education systems, India is still facing problems related to foundational learning, future-ready curriculum, job-ready skilling, quality of education, and motivation for self-learning. While 2020 was transformational for the education sector, the pace of innovation will accelerate in 2021. The adoption of digital tools, processes and software-led solutions will change the speed at which enterprises innovate, grow, support customers and conduct business. Enterprises will speed transformations using software that improves productivity, efficiency, accuracy, security and time-to-market by collecting and acquiring information digitally, coupled with the use of advanced analytics and data visualization to gain insights needed to accelerate innovation.

Security will take on a new meaning in 2021. Developers will address potential security issues, including security testing, much earlier in the design cycle. Greater emphasis will be placed on how products will be deployed, the use of touchless and contactless technology, removing human intervention, and fully automating networks that self-heal. User experience or UX will continue to grow in importance for both customers and providers of software solutions of all types due to the increased role such solutions play in professional and personal contexts, and the ever-increasing expectations resulting from frustrations with mediocre experiences.

Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief editor, VARINDIA