SAP is planning for the strong cloud adoption in India this year, focusing on small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that have accelerated their investments in a multi-cloud strategy.

“We are the market leader in the SMB sector, with over 9,330 mid-market business customers,” says, Subramanian Ananthapadmanabhan, vice-president, midmarket, SAP Indian subcontinent.

Ananthapadmanabhan says, “cloud adoption more than doubled in FY21. Our average deal sizes in core ERP (enterprise resource planning) space have grown 2.5X and we expect the momentum to continue.”

“SAP pledged Rs.500 crore to localize and accelerate its multi-cloud strategy. Through this strategy, we aim to enable customers to receive the benefits of our platform on their choice of cloud infrastructure," adds Ananthapadmanabhan.

According to reports, SAP’s multi-cloud strategy is being rapidly adopted by SMBs in IT-ITeS, life sciences and pharma, retail, and engineering, construction and operations.

“With the announcement of the production linked incentive (PLI) scheme, we expect the discrete manufacturing sector to significantly outperform,” adds Ananthapadmanabhan.

Sanchit Vir Gogia, CEO and chief analyst, Greyhound Research says, “SAP has steered its own products in this direction and also made acquisitions that fit with the changing buy-side trends. This has been complemented by changing sales and partner programs like RISE with SAP.”

SAP India is the fastest growing subsidiary of SAP SE, the world's leading provider of business software solutions. SAP India began its operations in 1996 with headquarters in Bangalore and offices in Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, and a direct presence in nine cities across India, besides having marketing associates in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Declared as the ‘Hub of the year in Asia Pacific and Japan in 2007, SAP India witnessed an unprecedented growth of over 100 pecrcent both in terms of license revenue and customer acquisition.