Spokesperson – Rajiv Bhalla, MD, Barco India
The year 2021 will always stand out as the year organisations and people adapted to the hybrid lifestyle. The beginning of a disruptive new decade marked by innovative solutions, technological advancements, and resilient organisations driven by visionary leaders, 2021 taught us many lessons. The tech industry has outdone itself, designing new solutions to take on even the most insidious of pandemic challenges and we should hold these lessons close as we move into the new year. The pandemic has highlighted one thing, for sure, an organisation is only as effective as its employees, and leaders must adopt a people-first approach in all their policies. As we embark on another revolution around the sun, let us put our heads together and work towards solutions which are sustainable and responsible. 2021 is the year we learned to adapt, let 2022 be the year we flourish as we focus unwaveringly on business resilience and optimal leadership.
Spokesperson – Rajesh Dhuddu, VP & Practice Leader Blockchain & Cybersecurity Tech Mahindra
“The accelerated integration of technology in business operations and workflows, along with increased adoption of Work from Home (WFH) model, have resulted in a surge in cyberthreats and attacks. Malicious threats from outside and within organizations, coupled with increasingly stringent data regulations, have made cybersecurity a C-suite level issue. Acknowledging this, organizations are focusing on re-evaluating their IT strategy ensuring an end-to-end, robust, and strategic infrastructure design based on Zero trust architecture to improve overall infrastructure security posture of business and network security lifecycles alike. Using low-code automation to harness collective knowledge and form a secure, centralized system of data records, to simplify operational systems and enable a cohesive view of things, is rapidly becoming the functional norm.”
Spokesperson – Rohit Khetan, Head Marketing & Strategy, Ginesys
The retail landscape will continue to evolve at a rapid pace in 2022. Post pandemic challenges and opportunities will be technology-driven with a deeper and real-time understanding of consumer trends and demand. Digitization has led to an increase in demand for integration of offline retail stores or pre-integration and online web stores and channels for a better omnichannel experience. Another trend we foresee is the gradual democratization of retail intelligence to benefit mid-size companies and SMEs. Increasingly people are using AI to drive customer behaviour at scale leveraging digital footprints. This includes using interest and social media footprints to subtly push customers to try certain products/ webstores. Industry data suggests that marketers will see an average increase of 10-20% in sales when using personalized experiences. Digital payments across retail formats like UPI are now at around 10% of retail transactions and only growing. Combined with credit cards, this is set to eclipse cash as the payment system of choice. Last but not the least, self-checkout is going to be a much-implemented feature across mid to large stores as costs to deploy this technology gradually reduce.
Spokesperson – Neetish Sarda, Founder Smartworks
“Managed office spaces will continue to grow, given the value, agility, and flexibility it offers to the occupiers. The year started slowly, but the demand for fully managed office spaces gradually increased, with us signing major multi-city deals with large companies. We also added close to a million sq. ft. area to our overall portfolio. With hybrid offices and work arrangements taking centre stage, managed office spaces have gained significant popularity and have become an integrated part of portfolio strategy for enterprises.2022 will see a complete transformation of offices into smart and dynamic spaces that incorporate the latest technologies to facilitate better workspace management and experience with data-driven decisions. Office experience has become more critical in the ‘new normal’ than ever, so a lot of focus will be on implementing the right tech solutions in workspaces for real-time insights on space optimisation and utilisation, leading to overall efficiency.”
Spokesperson – Mr. Arvind Bali, CEO Telecom Sector Skill Council
“As India is entering into global tie-ups and executing big-ticket projects like the PLI scheme, 5G launch, Smart Cities project, PM WANI project and BharatNet project, we are seeing an increased requirement for skilled manpower in all segments of the telecom sector. When it comes to futuristic technologies like 5G, IoT, Cloud Computing, ML/AI, and others, the industry will need a fresh batch of industry-certified skilled manpower which can tackle both the volume and technicality of the work involved. Additionally, India is also poised to become a global talent export hub and we need to actively engage both the rural and urban youth to create smart, sophisticated flag bearers for this initiative.”
Spokesperson – Lt. Gen. AK Bhatt (Retd), Director General, Indian Space Association (ISpA)
“Roll out of Spacecom Policy would bring in significant opportunities for Space Communication segment, specially the Space based broad-band, wherein LEO Satellites with low latency would help address connectivity challenges of far-flung areas and Rural India.”
Spokesperson – Agendra Kumar, Managing Director, Esri India
“As we welcome 2022, a wave of concern due to the new strain of COVID-19 yet again reiterates – the importance of being “geo-aware” to contextualize environmental, social, and economic systems for a safer and healthier society, and emphasizes the significance of “Preparing Strategically, Responding Rapidly and Recovering Methodically”. In spite of numerous challenges, 2021 has been a landmark year for the geospatial industry. While on one side the “geo-awareness” and “spatial thinking” surged to all time high, we also witnessed major strides by the government through new policies like Geospatial Data Guidelines, Drone Policy, Draft National Geospatial Policy 2021, among others. These make 2022 look very promising and as the geospatial technologies get subsumed into the enterprise IT architectures, GIS takes centre stage in new converged environments to help organizations unearth better economic, social, and environmental value and higher return on their investments.
Technological advances have pushed geospatial applications to newer heights, especially in the year 2021. While the technology supercharged normal business intelligence with a geographic component that allowed a holistic situational awareness, providing real-time insights into operations and systems, it also enabled us to fight COVID-19, from an interdisciplinary perspective, with proactive planning, international solidarity and a global perspective. Now, as the geospatial technologies are getting subsumed into the enterprise IT architectures, GISl is taking centre stage in new converged environments to help organizations unearth better economic, social, and environmental value and higher returns on their investments. The rapid rate of GIS adoption in the past year has indeed laid a strong foundation for the dawn of a new “Geo-Enabled Era” that will foster inclusivity, sustainability, and resilience in the future.”
Spokesperson – Anku Jain, Managing Director, MediaTek India.
“MediaTek expects 2022 to be a year of disruptive technological advancements. We are eyeing an array of developments, from the possibility of 5G deployment and spread of Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things to the continued boom in the semiconductor industry and quicker proliferation of smart devices. As a global fabless semiconductor company powering nearly 2 billion devices per year and spearheading technology democratization, we are keen to be at the forefront of this revolution. We expect the pandemic-accelerated momentum in technology to continue in 2022 and believe that semiconductors will be at the heart of transformative progress across industries. While we have always focused on developing and expanding our R&D capabilities, 2022 will be especially important as we take decisive steps to mark our position at the top of the semiconductor chart. We are eyeing strong and sustainable growth in the Indian ecosystem and are hiring robustly to achieve this goal. For 2022, our R&D centers are working on updating all our innovative technologies while also diversifying our portfolio into segments such as edge Internet of Things solutions and seamless design execution. We are also lining up innovations in the smart device segment and MediaTek customers have a great deal to look forward to in the new year.”
