SAP to double contribution from India

Pune: German multinational software corporation SAP is looking to double the contribution from its India operations by 2025, as the country is among the fastest growing geographies for the firm.

Its India operations posted high double-digit growth in 2021 across all market segments, Kulmeet Bawa, president and managing director, SAP Indian Subcontinent, told ET.

“2021 was the best year in our history, and we’ve contributed globally very holistically. India was one of the frontrunners in terms of the number of Rise customers globally,” Bawa said.


Rise is SAP's subscription based Cloud solution.

The India business grew in triple digits for three out of four quarters in 2021, indicative of the high demand for cloud-based solutions in the country.

In 2020, the company said it was pivoting to a cloud-led business and set itself a target of earning 22 billion euros from its cloud business by 2025.

Last year, SAP completed 25 years in India.

Bawa said growth came from large enterprises as well as small and medium businesses, which had started investing more on cloud-based solutions following the Covid-19 pandemic.

SAP has about 14,000 employees in India, across business operations and technology labs, of which over 1,500 were added in the past year.

Bawa said he wanted to make India an early talent hub for SAP globally and was currently hiring across areas like cybersecurity, machine learning and data scientists, among others.

Last month, SAP said it would create a new Cloud Success Services organisation, combining its services unit and the customer experience unit to focus on the life cycle management of customers.

Bawa said SAP would also look to deepen its engagement with the startup ecosystem in India.

It recently launched a new program directed at startups, to help them work with SAP solutions.

“One aspect is working with them as a technology enabler, and the second is to co-innovate with them, and that is very big for us,” he said.

The company runs an accelerator program, SAP Foundry.IO and works with startups to fine tune their solutions and find a larger audience.

“We have an advantage in India because of the massive talent pool across the organisation,” Bawa said.