The ongoing pandemic had a tremendous effect across all sectors. To keep small business continuity, we all had to reimagine the way we work and looked towards technologies to make certain we survive and thrive in a continually-evolving atmosphere. Software organizations, in specific, have been speedy to adapt as nicely as innovate in order to continue serving consumers across diverse verticals. The pandemic also highlighted the need to have to safe provide chains and place a sharp concentrate on self-reliance – an Atmanirbhar Bharat.
As we look to the future, we are bullish about India’s lengthy-term prospects of becoming a manufacturing hub. Per a current CII-EY report, “FDI in India – Now, Next and Beyond, Reforms and Opportunities”, India can count on to attract anyplace in between $120 billion to $160 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) annually by 2025 if we handle to raise the FDI to GDP ratio in between 3 per cent to 4 per cent. Encouragingly, about 50 per cent of respondents surveyed for the report saw India amongst the prime 3 economies or top manufacturing destinations of the globe by 2025. Reports from the ground look to point in this path. The telecom sector is currently witnessing robust investments with organizations moving their manufacturing to India. Things look promising for the auto elements and electronics sector as nicely. Even the pharmaceutical sector will see a enhance as organizations look at moving API manufacturing into India.
One of the crucial learnings from COVID-19 is that India has the talent to innovate and resolve international challenges. India now has an chance to adopt a more inclusive and proactive part in leveraging its vast pool of skilled sources, competitive costing, and created eco-technique for choose sectors to get ahead in the international provide chain reconfiguration race, as a lot of organizations are seeking to diversify their provide chains.
What we are seeing is a shift from “intent” to “implement” – as an alternative of plain-speak we see robust action from the government in creating India a favourable manufacturing hub. The Indian government has announced a series of reforms, which is a robust indicator of the commitment to creating India a self-reliant nation. Some of these involve setting up of manufacturing clusters, enhancing ease of carrying out small business, announcement of Production-linked Incentive (PLI) schemes, economic sector reforms, tax reforms, incentivizing R&D, massive infrastructure improvement projects, energy sector reforms, and strengthening the environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) in nation.
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As the nation prepares to move into the next phase of our war against Covid-19, we will witness elevated investments in vaccine improvement, manufacture, and delivery. Here also, India has currently shown the way by becoming a manufacturing hub and provide base for COVID-19 vaccines.
Some of the technologies that had been created in 2020 to deal with the pandemic will see massive-scale deployment. These involve citywide lockdown monitors to help city administrators – if needed, thermal scanning, video analytics-based options to enforce social distancing and wearing of face masks, healthier creating technologies to encourage the eventual return to the workplace, and UV sanitization for public transport and public spaces to name a couple of.
Increased digitalisation across the board – from the manufacturing sector to industrial and retail – will turn out to be the norm rather than an exception. The countrywide lockdown compelled hundreds of thousands of persons to work remotely. Even now, massive swathes of personnel continue to work remotely. The lockdown and a work-from-house atmosphere gave an impetus to digitalisation and, fortuitously, accelerated Industry 4.. We foresee this trend to continue, which implies that organisations will be focusing on safeguarding their IIoT transformation with industrial cybersecurity options. At the very same time, there will continue to be an elevated reliance on digital tools and applications to monitor, track, and strengthen asset efficiency in industrial and industrial establishments and the operations therein.
While there have been challenges in 2020, there had been learnings also. The lockdown produced everyone comprehend the significance of a cleaner, greener, safer, and healthier globe. The coming years are going to continue seeing speedy modifications – each in thoughts-set and on-ground implementation.
Dr Akshay Bellare is the President of Honeywell India. Views expressed are the author’s personal.