23 occurring 24: Making sense of a chaotic but vibrant yr for India’s tech sector

It was a difficult yr for Indian IT, however sectors like on-line gaming and drones skilled higher fortunes. There have been thrilling prospects for India’s area exploration and manufacturing ambitions. In the meantime, we’ve got solely simply began realising the immense potential of AI mixed with the consequences of dwelling in an more and more linked world. Here’s a one-stop recap for the yr that was:

15.Four billion: The variety of video games downloaded in India this yr, the second highest globally, solely after China. But it surely’s not been all clean crusing. The federal government hit actual cash gaming (RMG) corporations with tax liabilities of upto Rs 50,000 crore, ensuing within the RMG phase, which holds practically 60 per cent of the market, looking at a funding freeze and potential job losses. However the sector as an entire noticed a wholesome progress, particularly in esports, informal, hyper informal and mid-core video games. In keeping with a Lumikai report, there are 568 million avid gamers in India, together with 25 per cent paying customers; the typical income per person was $19.2.

80 crore: The variety of Indian residents whose private identifiable data was leaked after a safety breach on the Indian Council of Medical Analysis (ICMR) two months in the past. Nonetheless, this wasn’t an remoted incident; there have been a number of different cyberattacks, together with on organisations just like the Taj Inns, state-owned telecom operator BSNL, and so on. In keeping with a survey of 300 IT corporations, practically 73% have been hit by ransomware assaults this yr, up from 57% in 2022. Of those that have been attacked, practically 10% ended up paying the ransom.
467 million: The variety of social media customers in India in January 2023, equating to 32.8% of the inhabitants. The nation is a big marketplace for social media corporations and is among the many largest person bases for a lot of of them. Instagram was probably the most downloaded app globally in Q3 2023, with India accounting for 51% of first-time downloads in the identical interval. The Meta-owned app additionally launched its X-like providing, Threads, which surpassed the 150 million person mark globally inside 10 days of its launch, buoyed by downloads from India.

1.5 million: The variety of ecommerce purchases within the month of November 2023 on Open Community for Digital Commerce (ONDC). The federal government-backed community is aiming for as much as eight million month-to-month transactions by end-2024 and has already seen a peak of over 95,000 retail orders in a day. With ONDC, the federal government hopes to extend e-commerce penetration within the nation to 25% within the subsequent two years and attain a gross merchandise worth of $48 billion. Presently, the community has greater than 40,000 sellers who’re reside in additional than 200 cities and cities.

138.08 crore: The variety of folks lined by Aadhar, comprising 99% of India’s inhabitants. Not too long ago, the G20 World Partnership for Monetary Inclusion (GPFI), a report ready by the World Financial institution, acknowledged that the “implementation of DPIs resembling Aadhaar, together with the Jan Dhan financial institution accounts and cell phones, is taken into account to have performed a important function in shifting possession of transaction accounts from roughly one-fourth of adults in 2008 to over 80% now — a journey that it’s estimated might have taken as much as 47 years with out DPIs”.

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16,454: The discount in headcount at Infosys within the second quarter of FY24 as in comparison with the corresponding interval final yr. And Infosys was not alone; Wipro additionally reported a 14,472 drop, Tech Mahindra misplaced 13,308 staff, whereas TCS noticed its headcount go down by 7,186. This was a yr when the Indian IT sector got here crashing down from its post-pandemic funding excessive. Purchasers pulled again or paused initiatives indefinitely, ensuing within the nice resignation coming to a grinding halt. As well as, the trade additionally needed to take care of a large top-level churn involving the exits of a number of senior leaders and CEOs.$49.7 million: That is how a lot drone startups mopped up in investments throughout 20 rounds in FY2022-23, in comparison with $25 million obtained in FY2021-22 throughout 23 rounds. The truth is, the Indian Ministry of Civil Aviation has launched the Drone (Modification) Guidelines, 2023, signalling a big shift within the nation’s strategy to drone rules. The initiative seeks to propel India to the forefront of the worldwide drone sector by 2030. One of many modifications led to is the comfort of the beforehand stringent necessities for acquiring a Distant Pilot Certificates. Now, aspiring drone pilots can use government-issued proof of id and proof of deal with, resembling a voter ID, ration card or driver’s licence to use for the certificates as an alternative of the sooner mandated passport.

34.06 million: The variety of accounts linked to account aggregators (AA) as of December 2023, with the cumulative depend of consent requests until the identical interval touching 36.15 million. AA is an RBI-regulated entity (with an NBFC-AA license) that helps a person securely entry and share data from one monetary establishment to a different. There could be many AAs a person can select from, and it replaces the lengthy phrases and circumstances type of ‘clean cheque’ acceptance with a step-by-step permission and management for every use of your knowledge.

51.11 crore: The entire variety of accounts created underneath the Jan Dhan Scheme, which was introduced by the federal government in August 2014. A complete deposit of Rs 2.08 lakh crore has been made in these accounts till December this yr, a rise of over 300% in comparison with individuals who had financial institution accounts earlier than 2014. Additional, 34.71 crore Rupay debit playing cards have additionally been issued as far as of December 2023.

3: The variety of large world corporations which have invested in India’s semiconductor fabrication ecosystem, simply two years after India launched into an formidable plan to arrange the ecosystem from scratch. The massive three are Micron, Lam Analysis and Texas Devices. However other than them, there are additionally talks of homegrown tech big HCLTech, the Tata Group, and others being inquisitive about organising numerous key parts for use within the semiconductor fabrication ecosystem.

1,600: The variety of world functionality centres (GCCs) in India. As many as 21 GCCs got here up in Q3 FY23, together with distinguished names like Blackberry, MetLife, Warner Bros Discovery and Constancy Worldwide. The GCC workforce in India stands at 1.66 million, and there’s anticipated to be an addition of 1.Eight lakh to 2 lakh key roles.

Rs 6,000-7,000 crore: That is how a lot Japan’s TDK is predicted to spend money on India to ascertain a state-of-the-art plant in Haryana. The corporate, which is a serious provider of lithium-ion cells to Apple, represents one of many many suppliers that Apple is trying to deliver to India because it appears to be like to diversify its provide chain from China. Apple’s gorilla glass producer Corning too is organising a Rs 1,000-crore plant in Tamil Nadu, simply because the Cupertino-based firm appears to be like at onboarding extra Indian suppliers.

6: That’s what number of years it has taken for India to place in place its privateness legislation, with the Digital Private Knowledge Safety Invoice being ratified in August 2023. The discharge of the manager guidelines for the implementation of the invoice are anticipated quickly. This yr noticed the most important and most decisive coverage actions within the data know-how area. Among the many first was the modification to the Info Expertise Guidelines of 2021, which included guidelines and rules for on-line gaming.

27: The variety of corporations granted approvals to arrange laptop computer, servers and different IT {hardware} manufacturing within the nation. These corporations are anticipated to gasoline incremental funding of as much as Rs 3,000 crore within the electronics manufacturing ecosystem over the subsequent few years with an anticipated manufacturing worth of Rs 3.5 lakh crore.

$13.11 billion: That is the quantity of digital items exports that passed off simply between April and September 2023, which is a 27.62% bounce from final yr’s $10.27 billion. Home manufacturing has elevated at a CAGR of 13% from $49 billion in FY17 to $101 billion in FY23, and the nation’s electronics export is predicted to succeed in $120 billion by FY26.

$17 trillion to $24 trillion: The credit score hole for MSMEs in India. Lower than 11 per cent of MSMEs have entry to formal credit score within the nation. The open credit score enablement community (OCEN) is fixing these issues by making a framework for brief tenor and small ticket loans, permitting distant lenders to function in distant geographies. It’s a framework of APIs for interplay between lenders, mortgage brokers, assortment and disbursement companions, derived knowledge suppliers and account aggregators. In August, OCEN 4.Zero protocol to allow money flow-based lending to MSMEs was unveiled. OCEN has thus far been used to provide short-tenor loans starting from Rs 168 to Rs Eight lakh.

1,000+: The variety of pre-trained AI fashions now obtainable on the Bhashini platform. As many as 5,215 inputs of audio, textual content, and so on, have been crowdsourced to complement Bhashini’s database underneath the Bhasha Daan programme, which incorporates 44 hours 22 minutes and 31,390 sentences in translation metrics. The nationwide language translation platform made headlines in Might with the launch of the Jugalbandi chatbot in partnership with Microsoft, introducing voice-based funds for NPCI providers like Whats up! UPI, and enabling real-time translation of speeches on the G20 meet. Not too long ago, it powered real-time translation of PM Modi’s speeches into a number of Indian languages at two public occasions. Jugalbandi covers 10 of India’s 22 official languages and 171 of practically 20,000 authorities programmes, and round 20 startups are making use of Bhashini for purposes.

7 billion: The variety of parameters India’s first Hindi giant language mannequin (LLM) — Sarvam AI’s OpenHathi — has been educated on. The yr began out with India not having any indigenously constructed foundational fashions, not to mention one constructed for Indian languages and contexts. But it surely has ended with a number of startups and enterprises constructing LLMS indigenously. These embrace Krutrim AI’s LLM Krutrim, Kissan AI’s Dhenu 1.0, Corover AI’s BharatGPT and TechMahindra’s Venture Indus.

Rs 615 crore: What it price ISRO to hold out the Chandrayaan-Three mission which obtained Vikram lander and Pragyan rover to landing on the ‘far facet’ of the moon. After the success of Chandrayaan-3, Aditya L1 and Gaganyaan TV-D1 unmanned take a look at flight in 2023, the Division of Area has deliberate six polar satellite tv for pc launch automobile missions in 2024. This contains two missions to launch an area science satellite tv for pc, an Earth commentary satellite tv for pc, two know-how demonstration missions and two business missions by NewSpace India Restricted. The Indian area sector was valued at $9.6 billion in 2020 and contributed 2-3% of the worldwide area financial system. It’s anticipated to succeed in $13 billion by 2025, and by 2030 India goals to seize 10% of the worldwide financial system.

1,900+: The variety of AI startups current in India, and over 100 of those at the moment are GenAI ones. India noticed buyers bullish on AI startups. Indic LLM-maker Sarvam AI raised $41 million in a Sequence A funding, whereas Ola founder-backed Krutrim AI raised $24 million. The cumulative funding for GenAI startups within the nation hit $700 million this yr, as per know-how trade apex physique Nasscom’s estimates. In keeping with buyers, main progress could be anticipated from AI-based software-as-a-service startups going ahead, in addition to from startups working in AI tooling and infrastructure and GenAI-based content material technology.

Rs 50,000+: The cash folks stated they misplaced owing to AI voice cloning — a brand new device for Jamtara-type scammers. A survey of 1,000 folks confirmed that 47% of respondents skilled or know somebody who has skilled AI voice rip-off which is double the worldwide common of 25%. Out of those that have been attacked, practically 83% stated they misplaced cash — with 48 per cent shedding over Rs 50,000. A separate examine confirmed Indians are uncovered to almost 12 pretend messages day by day and {that a} new phishing web site is created each 11 seconds. This yr additionally witnessed the emergence of AI-generated deepfakes or artificial media. This caught the eye of policymakers, with the IT Ministry sending advisories to social media companies in addition to constructing a devoted reporting portal for victims.

$825 million: That’s how a lot Micron is investing to arrange an meeting, testing, packaging unit within the nation. And that is the primary of many different big-ticket investments within the nation. For the Indian digital manufacturing ecosystem, 2023 has been a stellar yr. Google has adopted swimsuit and dedicated to start out the manufacturing of its newest flagship Pixel Eight telephones in India. It has already dedicated to investing $10 billion over the subsequent few years. Cisco has additionally introduced to spend money on the nation to focus on as much as $1 billion in home manufacturing and exports from the nation.

900 million: The variety of smartphone customers within the nation as of December 2023. Along with this, India additionally has 250 million characteristic cellphone customers. The smartphone person base in India is predicted to the touch over 1.1 billion by 2025, rising at a CAGR of 22%. In keeping with analysis agency Statista, the penetration price of smartphones in India reached 71% in 2023 and was estimated to succeed in 96% in 2040.