Impact of RPA in India: Moving Towards an Efficient Automated Country

The use of robotics and automation systems is not new to India. However, the gradual growth in its innovative approach is what can be called novel. New automation capabilities like Robotics Process Automation (RPA) are growing across the country be it in traditional industries, government systems or service sectors. In everything we see and experience has at least one automated element in it.

Contrary to the idea of 'automation will replace humans'; the change is taking place in India at an unprecedented scale. It may appear that RPA is anti-workforce technology, but in reality, it is bound to create new sets of job opportunities for people. Only, the budding professionals in a country of 1.3 billion need to be ready for adapting to the change before it revamps the entire job landscape.

According to a report, the RPA market in India will grow at a CAGR of above 20.0 percent during the forecast period 2019-2025. The report says the RPA market in the country is driven by the increasing demand to automated accounting and process management. Besides, RPA vendors are also focusing on developing best-in-class intelligent process automation bots.

As it stands now, RPA software helps enterprises to reduce human resource requirements in various customer support activities and its implementation across business processes minimizes a lot of work along with managing a huge client base and continuous 24/7 support from the bots.

However, the market lags behind North America and European regions. Numerous RPA vendors are seeking to penetrate into the Indian market and take an early entrant advantage. The Indian subcontinent region is weighed as a favorite destination for the RPA market growth in the near future.

The market report also suggests that UiPath, Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, Kofax, SAP and WorkFusion are among the leaders of the RPA market in India as they are adopting various organic and inorganic growth strategies including significant collaborations and partnerships, joint ventures and certain others. For example, SAP acquired Contextor in an effort to enhance its internal policies and establish itself as a suitable RPA vendor in the market. Also, to empower its offering in intelligent automation and cloud services, Blue Prism purchased Thoughtonomy.
Apart from these several other players are also expected to emerge by performing in local markets and offering customized services to clients.

Daniel Dines, Founder, and CEO, UiPath says, "In terms of the Indian market, RPA is emerging as a strategic technology, because of the vast presence of the BPO sector and RPA's role as a game-changer. With India's huge workforce and talent, there's also a big opportunity for developing expertise in the area of RPA. According to me, India will become a global powerhouse for RPA."

Automation Anywhere, leading global Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platform, said last year that India is currently their second-biggest revenue generator after the United States. Global capabilities centers, service providers and Indian enterprises form the largest base of the company's customers in India. Without disclosing exact investments, the company said it would expand its footprint by opening four new offices in India. Automation Anywhere is keenly looking forward to establish its presence in Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Vadodara and open new offices in Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Pune. Currently, it has three engineering centers in India – two in Bangalore and one in Vadodara.

"As organizations seek to lower operating costs and improve employee productivity with RPA, India possesses tremendous opportunity for our company," said Ankur Kothari, Chief Revenue Officer & Co-Founder of Automation Anywhere.

He further added, "We are building the world's most efficient and intuitive end-to-end intelligent RPA platform, and over the next year, we anticipate deploying more than one million bots across India and the Middle East to help more companies discover, deploy and scale RPA to drive extraordinary human potential."

The company has also committed to investing US$100 million in India in the next 3-5 years. The investments will go towards expanding its R&D centers, creating an ecosystem to build a digital workforce and enable its partners worldwide.

As RPA is expanding its roots in the business world, new jobs are getting created across various industries. The technology can take up any role where data and a set of rules are involved, be it retail, healthcare, banking or any other sector for that matter. The increasing applications of RPA have also paved the way for many new job roles including RPA Process Analyst, RPA Process Designer / Developer, Production Manager, and significant others.

Therefore, there is no doubt that as RPA solutions take over more and more routine tasks, the nature of the jobs and therefore the skills required for the new jobs will also change. The RPA industry across India has great scope for growth in the near future. Both education providers and companies are working towards creating the necessary knowledge pool to fulfill the industry demands.