Time to ride the digital age

In another 15-20 years, we can envision Industrie 4.0, the streamlining of production through digital physical frameworks. About 20 million workers would require reskilling to be absorbed in new types of work as a result of business digitisation

With an expected billion network devices and millions of Indians hooked to the Internet, India can ride the Digital Age with innovation and be the benchmark for the world. Digital Age brings its own set of unique challenges and success that will help the companies take a notch up in their success milestones. Digital Marketing is the buzzword across every small, medium or big companies seeking the new age digital wave to leverage their potential for growth and revenue.

IT sector is regarded as a reliable source for providing essential support to the Indian economy. The industry has contributed less than 5 per cent to the country's GDP, 10 years ago; but today it contributes nearly twice as much. The IT sector has also initiated four million jobs and provided indirect employment to 10 million.

About 200 Indian IT firms are present in over 100 countries. The Indian government has contributed incentives for the IT and ITeS sector and had encouraged the sector with lesser government intervention compared to other sectors.

The country has become the 'global digital capabilities hub' with around 50 per cent to 75 per cent of global digital talent present in the country.

The digital business has become the "golden standard for Industrie 4.0", a reference to the "fourth industrial revolution" containing cloud computing, the industrial internet of things and factory automation. In another 15-20 years, we can envision Industrie 4.0, the streamlining of production through digital physical frameworks. The Future of Manufacturing (FoM) consolidates the virtual and genuine world to get an all-encompassing perspective of the entire value chain. This is finished by joining superior programming with cutting-edge equipment and digitizing the product development and production.

Digitalisation of manufacturing offers an exceptional open door for Indian enterprises. As the world is moving towards industry 4.0, India will likewise need to move with it if 'Make in India' needs to succeed. This will imply that we need to receive and adjust new advances in our manufacturing directly through our supply chains. Digitalization must be the best administration need on two dimensions: On the one hand, organizations need to adjust what they offer to reflect Industrie 4.0 and add digital solutions and services to their portfolio.

According to a McKinsey report, with more than half a billion internet subscribers, India is one of the largest and fastest growing markets for digital consumers, and the rapid growth has been propelled by public and private sector alike. India's lower-income states are bridging the digital divide, and the country has the potential to be a truly connected nation by 2025. Much more growth is possible. As India's digital transformation unfolds, it could create significant economic value for consumers, businesses, microenterprises, farmers, government, workers, and other stakeholders.

Digital adoption by India's businesses has so far been uneven, but new digital business models could proliferate across most sectors. We find that core digital sectors such as IT and business process management (IT-BPM), digital communication services, and electronics manufacturing could double their GDP level to $355 billion to $435 billion by 2025, while newly digitising sectors (including agriculture, education, energy, financial services, healthcare, logistics, and retail) as well as digital applications in government services and labour markets could each create $10 billion to $150 billion of incremental economic value in the same period. Some 60 million to 65 million jobs could be created by the productivity surge by 2025, although redeployment will be essential to help the 40 million to 45 million workers whose jobs will likely be displaced or transformed by digital technologies, based on our estimates.

For business digitisation and automation, we assumed a midpoint automation adoption scenario, based on modelled estimates for India from MGI's past research. Under this scenario, we estimate that about 5 percent of current work would be displaced by 2025 as a result of digitisation.

Most of the work in a few types of jobs would be displaced, but for most occupations, only a fraction of the current work performed would be digitised by 2025. Assuming the share of jobs displaced is equivalent to the share of full-time-equivalent workers displaced, we conclude that about 20 million workers would require reskilling to be absorbed in new types of work as a result of business digitisation.