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India’s storage market takes hit but hasn’t lost its shine
The slower growth in storage spending in India amid the Covid-19 pandemic is expected to be mitigated by digitisation efforts by financial services and manufacturing firms
The Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on IT spending is expected to hit home in India’s storage market, with revenue growth slowing from 11.6% before the outbreak to 4% over the next four years.
That is according to GlobalData, a market research firm, which noted that India’s storage market will reach $4.5bn by 2024.
Fuelling the growth are rising volumes of data created by emerging technologies like big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IoT) that are being adopted by several industries.
According to GlobalData, banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), manufacturing, energy, information technology and retail will account for 53% of the overall storage revenue in India by 2024.
Among those industries, BFSI will contribute the most (13.7%) to India’s overall storage revenue in 2024. Growing data privacy concerns are particularly paramount for BFSI sector, and with the changes in operations as banks continue to embrace digitalisation through online banking and apps-based support.
“India’s efforts related to data localisation law, data generation from client interactions, technology enhancements in storage, declining bandwidth price, availability of high-speed data connectivity and surge in e-commerce business will drive storage market growth during the forecast period,” said Shamim Khan, senior technology analyst at GlobalData.
Khan added that as a result of digitalisation, huge volumes of structured and unstructured data will require investments in storage, processing and security in order to address privacy-related issues and comply with regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation.
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In the manufacturing sector, data storage revenue is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 2.7% from 2019 to 2024.
GlobalData said as manufacturing depends on the collaboration between the design team, partners and suppliers, plus the in-house administration of data, digitalisation initiatives which leverage technologies like robotic process automation and edge computing would be an added advantage where data storage becomes a necessity.
“The enterprise storage market in India will witness steady growth soon due to its economics and business structure, data security, data localisation laws, growing demand for big data analytics and IoT connected devices and digital India initiatives,” said Khan. “Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the storage market is expected to grow with enterprises preferring cloud-based storage options as compared to the current prominent hard disk drive and network-attached storage-based products.”
The size and potential of India’s storage market has been a boon to storage suppliers, including Pure Storage which recently announced its formal entry into the Indian market with a complete sales, channels and marketing team, along with the appointment of new distributors and resellers.
“This is a significant milestone for Pure Storage in India as we are now able to support a wider range of customers and partners” said Ramanujam Komanduri, country manager for India at Pure Storage. “The timing could not be better as Indian enterprises ramp up their digital transformation journeys.”
Rajnish Arora, vice-president for enterprise computing at IDC Asia-Pacific noted that India’s $3tn economy is set for massive change, with data-driven businesses disrupting the competitive landscape across many industries.
“Pure Storage’s announcement of its formal entry into the Indian market and a strong leadership team will put the company at the heart of this massive transformation opportunity with its compelling modern data platform,” he added.
