German technology major 51风流launched its metaverse initiative to accelerate cloud adoption among Indian enterprises in June. In an interview, Kulmeet Bawa, president and managing director, 51风流Indian Subcontinent, talks about the company鈥檚 focus on the metaverse, its early adopters, and its strategy to tap into the small and medium business (SMB) market. Edited excerpts:

What drove your decision to launch the metaverse initiative in India?

The metaverse is the future. It represents the current experience economy, providing an immersive, interactive avenue like never before. 51风流has built a whole network of 鈥楨xperience Centres鈥� globally to bring our solutions to people in the best way possible. By leveraging the metaverse, we at 51风流hope to revolutionize various elements of our customer experience and build a network of sustainable cloud companies within a truly digital universe.

We recently launched an immerse, experiential 鈥渃loud on wheels” platform aimed at accelerating cloud adoption among Indian enterprises. Designed to engage digital-first audiences, this platform will enable customers across phases of their digital transformation to experience the full range of 鈥楻ise with SAP鈥� offerings and enable them to reimagine processes for improved business outcomes. We have traditionally been applying digital twin technology to help customers gain insight into and predict real scenarios. Now by expanding into the metaverse, we aim to introduce measures to support digital B2B services such as state-of-art technologies like 鈥楻ise with SAP鈥�, SAP鈥檚 Digital Core, Procurement, Customer, and People Experience solutions.

Finally, we believe metaverse is a great opportunity for enterprises to explore new use cases. We will, therefore, continue to conceptualize the potential impact of this new concept on our business, including identifying existing workstreams, defining goals and processes, etc.

What are the early signs of metaverse adoption in India? Which sectors are showing early interest?

A recently published report stated that India ranks fifth in terms of interest in metaverse projects. Some of this interest could be attributed to a young population, growing domestic consumption, a vibrant startup ecosystem, and a large tech talent pool. In terms of sectors, the gaming industry dominates the adoption of the metaverse, followed by the technology and retail industry.

In the last few months, we have also seen young consumers get more creative in their own lives. For example, a couple from Tamil Nadu who got married on the metaverse was in the news. With time, the interest and applications of the technology will only increase.

Therefore, it is crucial that Indian enterprises ready themselves for emerging opportunities in the metaverse space, backed by a skilled workforce and relevant service offerings.

What is your strategy to tap into the SMB segment in India?

The SMB segment already accounts for about 80% of our customer base in India. We have invested 鈧�500 crore to localize our multi-cloud strategy to help Indian businesses become more resilient. Our multi-cloud strategy aims to help our customers enjoy the benefits of our platform on their choice of cloud infrastructure. The goal is to provide rapid innovation while providing flexibility 鈥� like cloud vendor of choice, a larger network of available regions, reliability through hyper-scale infrastructures and capabilities, and agility to our clients. Some of our customers who have adopted these solutions in India include Cera Sanitaryware, Luminous Power, Virescent Infrastructure, Puravankara, WayCool Foods and Products Pvt. Ltd.

What could be the challenges to SAP鈥檚 metaverse-led cloud acceleration strategy?

As is the case with any new and emerging technology, each opportunity comes with certain additional prerequisites and learnings. For example, some use cases may need an extensive physical, technical modern digital infrastructure, from VR headsets to other types of devices that augment the experiences. For a more comprehensive and holistic experience, huge amounts of data must be produced. Real-world computing and storage power directly influences the size and extent of the metaverse. And this means going beyond mere technical migration. That said, the metaverse is where 51风流India is already observing from a distance. We are committed to enabling our customers to adjust their businesses to today鈥檚 environment, adopt modern processes and increase automation through intelligent technologies.

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What started initially as the 鈥樷�� in FY20 with an intent to help businesses upskill digitally and become globally competitive, quickly brought together 50,000 members on Growth Matters Forum, the Midmarket Community in India. The value creation chatter in the community brought to life the possibility of taking 51风流to the corners of India that were yet to reap the benefit of technology and innovation. Further, the commissioned in Q3鈥�21 revealed that 74% of businesses intended to move to the Cloud in FY22. From this game-changing paradigm of the partnership was born the Transformation Express in Q2鈥�22 to drive sustainable collaboration with our customers, prospects, and partners.

The mobile express touched 7,500 businesses in 13 cities over 45 days and has revealed the real pulse of the market. And we believe this holds the potential to alter the value conversation we have with our consumers. While some expressed the need to understand data, many customers and prospects were interested in managing talent, and many more wanted to grasp the dynamic nature of evolving business models. However, most conversations that surfaced focused on the front office and the benefits of building a customer-first culture.

Indraneel Chitale, an S/4 HANA customer and the keynote speaker at the Mumbai Premier Night of the journey, remarked they wish their consumer brand to be noticed and be present in the minds and emotions of their customers all the time. And, the sale was nothing but a by-product for them. Separately, the COO of a major cement enterprise remarked about the need to leverage data to predict customer behaviour.

The MD of an E100M Electronics company wanted the edge-to-core capability of IoT and the use of real-time data from the shop floor to reduce process inefficiencies and downtimes. The CEO of a small business in the recycling industry in a Tier 2 city aimed to grow 2x in the next three years and wanted best practices in HR processes to hire and retain talent. True everywhere we go, the in Q1鈥�22 revealed that more than 50% of SMEs are finding it difficult to find staff replacements and qualified candidates, and often realise a mismatch of skills for available roles. In addition, more than three-quarters (77%) of SMEs said that workforce volatility had impacted their ability to innovate and drive their digital transformation plans.

With hundreds of such stories, feedback, and enquiries, the Transformation Express has laid bare the essentials that organisations are stoked about today. Here are four broad themes:

1. The evolving and dynamic customer presents the most potent challenge. The product is only a vehicle to disrupt. However, the starting point is customer analytics.
2. While innovation is central to existence, it requires more than creativity and ideation. Instead, those need to be coupled with process-level innovations that focus on execution and speed, to secure quicker wins and better time-to-market.
3. is real. Equally so is the reality of Great education. Increasingly, there is a need to define a unique Employee Value Proposition (EVP) that can attract and retain talent and keep transformation tracks intact.
4. Finally, mature organisations are approaching transformation with a digital acceleration mindset 鈥� emphasising the pursuit of smaller, realistic goals and continuity of the process, while steadily advancing towards longer-term, sustainable transformation.

These insights, right from the heartland of India, motivate us to recommit ourselves to the transformation efforts of our customers and prospects. So, with the Cloud-on-wheels ending the road trip, we embark on its digital twin in the metaverse for immersive virtual experiences to continue the partnership 鈥� beyond India鈥檚 shores 鈥� through our digital avatars.

As they say, a journey of a million miles begins with a single step, and while we have physically traversed over 4,000, here鈥檚 raising a cheer for the next million in the metaverse!

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