SAP has been in India for about 27 years– more than half of the global enterprise’s fifty years of existence driving innovation and future-proofing businesses around the world through cutting-edge solutions and services. The country is home to the tech giant’s largest R&D center outside Germany, SAP Labs India, comprised of teams from Bengaluru and Gurgaon that provide services to 450,000 customers worldwide.

On SAP’s outstanding presence in the country, Kulmeet Bawa, President & MD, SAP Indian Subcontinent, said:

“It’s been a very exciting 25 years for SAP because while the Indian economy has grown about 10x in the last 25 years, today, we end up touching more than 60 percent of India’s GDP, just through SAP and its partner ecosystem. I call it the nation-building story for us.”

Riding SAP’s Cloud Momentum

Specific to the German company’s pivot to the cloud, Indian businesses of various sizes and industries’ adoption of SAP’s cloud portfolio of solutions and services have significantly contributed to the enterprise software multinational’s cloud revenues. India’s huge potential and dramatic market growth have been commended by SAP leaders, including CEO Christian Klein, during the in-person flagship event SAP Sapphire in Orlando, Florida.

Thomas Saueressig, Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE for SAP Product Engineering, shared in an interview in Bengaluru that India has been the fastest-growing market in the Asia Pacific and Japan in recent years, doubling its cloud revenues for seven consecutive quarters year-over-year (YOY). He detailed that 70 percent of India’s GDP at some point leverages an SAP system, which demonstrates the impact of the company’s solution offerings in the country.

“So, we see the significance of SAP in India and for sure with that we know that we have an obligation to further help and support in this digital transformation,” stressed Saueressig.

In the Q1 2023 financials of SAP, the company saw a 24 percent YOY growth in cloud revenue at €3.18 billion and up 22 percent at constant currencies. In addition, the Walldorf-based company’s current cloud backlog grew by 25% to €11.15 billion, with a 78% increase in the cloud backlog of SAP S/4HANA. Cloud gross profit rose by 28% (IFRS) to €2.24 billion.

Indian Enterprises Rising with SAP

SAP’s concierge offering RISE with SAP has garnered numerous customers from around the world including India– from big conglomerates to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Bawa earlier shared that SAP in India is contributing 13-15% to SAP’s global RISE business division (Cloud ERP) and has doubled its cloud customers in the recent two years.

Most recently, Air India has joined the roster of SAP cloud customers, such as Mahindra & Mahindra, Wipro Limited, Best Value Chem Private Limited, and HCLTech, that have all migrated their key digital operations to the cloud. In April, India’s leading airline and a Star Alliance member announced that it has completed its ERP migration leveraging RISE with SAP, a Business Transformation as a Service (BTaaS) offering. 

“We are glad to have completed this migration successfully, using a high level of creativity in overcoming the challenges that came our way,” Air India’s Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Dr. Satya Ramaswamy. “We are very grateful to the fantastic team from SAP that worked with us hand-in-hand to execute this transition flawlessly, and ahead of schedule.”

“Air India is one of the most iconic brands in the country, and we’re thrilled to deepen our long-standing partnership, as they enter a new chapter in their journey to become a world-class airline serving global customers, with a proud Indian heart,” Bawa commented. “With SAP’s cutting-edge cloud technology, Air India will enhance its customer experience, become an intelligent, sustainable enterprise, and accelerate people transformation as key elements of its growth,” he added.

As for the latest cloud-native ERP software for SMEs, GROW with SAP, Saueressig mentioned the huge potential in the robust mid-market of India. He highlighted that about 80 percent of SAP customers in the country are mid-size businesses that are anticipated to further drive growth.

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According to the India Skills Report 2021, which was conducted in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), women make up 36{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} of the workforce in the country. This participation is higher than it has been in the previous five years, reflecting a positive sign for future structural economic developments.

Additionally, the study has found that the employability of India’s youth has decreased to 45.9{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22}, significantly lower than the analysis of youth employability in terms of overall employable youth in 2020. Despite this, the report noted that this percentage is a strong reflection of the average age group of India’s emerging professional landscape. 

Moreover, the report also looked at the patterns of men’s and women’s employability by region. The top three states with the highest percentage of employed women were Rajasthan, Telangana, and Karnataka.

Particularly in Karnataka, SAP Labs India and the UNDP have recently partnered with the State Government to facilitate improved access to career guidance, employment, entrepreneurship opportunities, and to foster 21st-century skills in a bid to empower women and youth in the state.

The India Skills Report 2021 has emphasised that the representation of Indian women in various industries is crucial when it comes to bridging the skills gap that has emerged as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a statement, Nadia Rasheed, Deputy Resident Representative at UNDP India, said:

“The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened many existing inequalities. Empowering women and youth to access sustainable livelihood opportunities is critical to ensuring an inclusive and sustainable recovery. With the Government of Karnataka and SAP, we intend to leverage our collective strengths to expand opportunities for young people and women and to help make communities more resilient.”

SAP in India Fosters Digital Inclusion with CSR Initiative 

Code Unnati, a recipient of the Golden Peacock Award for Corporate Social Responsibility, collaborates with academia, state, and district government institutions, as well as non-profit and private organisations to build a sustainable impact. Since its launch in SAP Labs India four years ago, Code Unnati has so far trained more than 1 million students ages 10 to 16 years in digital literacy, with 65{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} of these young participants being girls.

Over the next three years, Code Unnati is anticipated to reach over 20,000 youth and 5,000 women in Bangalore Rural, Raichur, and Dakshin Kannada districts through the following initiatives:

• Giving opportunities for the youth to participate in design thinking seminars, innovation challenges, and boot camps by connecting them with government incubation centres
• Providing digital financial education, entrepreneurial skills, and digital literacy for women and youth
• Supporting women through community-level mentorship and handholding campaigns to help them establish or scale their micro-enterprises

Similarly, SAP India’s Global Bharat initiative also aims to enable businesses to digitally evolve themselves and upskill their workforce to equip them with today’s relevant skills. In partnership with the NASSCOM Foundation, the UNDP, and Pratham InfoTech Foundation, the program was launched in June 2020 to empower micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in India by providing them access to innovative sourcing solutions, as well as tools to enhance the workforce’s digital, financial, and soft skills.

Sindhu Gangadharan, Senior Vice President and Managing Director at SAP Labs India, said that technology has enabled everyone to stay connected, especially during the pandemic. She believes the demand for digital skills will rise and an abundance of entrepreneurial opportunities will emerge.

“Our mission of making the world run better and improving people’s lives well aligns with UNDP’s global goals. We are happy to see ourselves in the role of equipping women and youth in Karnataka to make them future-ready, and thus ensuring diversity and inclusion,” Gangadharan stressed.

Furthermore, SAP will directly lead the strategic mentorship for all of the Code Unnati initiatives in Karnataka. In the target districts, it will also provide 15,000 students with 21st-century skills training as well as Entrepreneurship Development Programs. 

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SAP in India has been at the forefront of helping the youth of the nation to upskill with new-age technologies and digital skills. Following the recent partnership with UNICEF centred on improving the employability of the youth amid the pandemic by providing career counseling and digital education, SAP India will now collaborate with tech giants and multinational companies to deliver training programmes across India to skill and upskill the youth with new-age skills.

In pursuit of building ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’, which translates to ‘self-reliant India’ or ‘self-sufficient India’, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) has urged the Indian states through the Directorate General of Training (DGT) to further expand the new-age courses across their respective training centers. DGT is the apex organisation of MSDE for the development and coordination of vocational training across India.

Helping DGT fulfill its mission, several technology companies committed to deliver 21st-century digital skillset training programmes in connection to the Industry 4.0 revolution. Accenture, CISCO, IBM India Pvt. Ltd., Microsoft Corp. (India) Ltd., NASSCOM, SAP India, and Quest Alliance are some of the key players that have signed various Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs) with DGT to enable the states to achieve the mission of upskilling and equipping the youth with technology.

“The new wave of technology revolution is poised to change the nature of jobs and in order to keep pace with this changing nature, we need to undertake skilling of future workforce in relevant technology areas to meet the future demands of industries. The need of the hour is to restructure the current academic framework of ITIs to offer more robust technical programs in new technology areas of Industrial Revolution 4.0 like Data Analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Blockchain, etc.,” said Dr. Mahendra Nath Pandey, Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.

DGT as the Technology Enabler

In support of MSDE’s call towards building ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ by meeting the local demand for a skilled workforce in the State as well as to increase the footprints of Indian workers in national and international markets, DGT is expected to provide all possible technical support to the States for the formulation of new proposals and training of instructors and trainers for such new-age courses. 

To date, DGT has already introduced 13 National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF) compliant New-Age training courses that vary from 6 months to 2 years. The courses include:

• Data Analysts and Scientists
• Technician Mechatronics
• Smart Agriculture
• Cloud Computing
• Process Automation Experts
• User Experience and Human-Machine Interaction Designers
• Blockchain Specialists
• Software and Applications Developers
• Geoinformatics Assistant
• AI and Machine Learning Specialists
• Big Data Specialists
• Information Security Analysts
• Robotics Engineers and Ecommerce 
• Social Media Specialists

To address the need to train new-collar workers who are adept in technologies in manufacturing and services that are increasingly becoming digitally and artificial intelligence led, the courses have been developed in consultation and active participation of industrial experts. This means that participants should expect a wide demand and a robust curriculum.

On 12th June 2020, DGT had written to the Additional Chief/Principal Secretaries of Technical Skill Education requesting the launch of the new-age courses in all ITIs.

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