As per the senior executives from IBM, the Indian domestic technology market remains robust because it has a large headroom for increasing technology spending as a share of GDP. Paul Burton, general manager, IBM Asia Pacific, and Sandip Patel, managing director, IBM India and South Asia, spoke at the flagship IBM Think conference in Mumbai, saying that skill gaps and talent scarcity are also driving increased investments in artificial intelligence (AI) and automation.

 

“In India I have not seen this notion of a slowdown,” Patel, adding that all micro and macro indicators suggest that the technology spends will keep growing.

 

Patel further stated that the India team, as well as some recently built IBM facilities in areas such as Kochi and Gandhinagar, are driving many of the solutions used on IBM's flagship AI platform watsonx.

 

“A lot of the important development actually happened through our research and software labs (in India). IBM’s team globally collaborates to develop products that are components of the main software,” Patel said.

 

Patel mentioned that India teams have made important contributions to all three Watsonx services, including data, AI, and governance. India accounts for approximately one-third of IBM's entire global workforce of over 2.8 lakh employees. Burton said that, as compared to sophisticated markets such as North America or Europe, the APAC region has more headroom for technological spending. "If you look at the size of the technology market as a percentage of GDP for advanced markets, typically above 2% could be as high as 5% for the likes of Singapore and the US," he explained.

 

In the case of APAC, which includes India, this ratio is 1%-1.4%, indicating that there is plenty of space for expansion, according to Burton.