SAP is betting big on the government sector to maintain its upward trajectory in India.
“There is significant scope as far as business is concerned in the government sector. It presents a lot of opportunities, particularly in the energy and infrastructure verticals,” SAP India Chief Operating Officer Debdeep Sengupta told this correspondent.
The company, which is already working with government sector customers such as the Department of Posts, the Indian Navy, Steel Authority of India, the Maharashtra State Power Generation Co. Ltd., expects the segment to remain its highest growth area.
“We have been working with various entities in government, be it defence, the Centre or the State. The government will remain our highest growth area in India as well as globally. They are one of the biggest spenders on technology,” he said.
SAP expressed hope of faster decision making in the segment with the new government coming to power.
Asked if delayed payments are a challenge when working with the government, he said slow decision making was the biggest challenge for them, adding that timely decision would help in faster adoption of technology.
Going forward, Mr. Sengupta said verticals such as healthcare, higher education and defence as well as security would drive growth in the government sector for SAP.
The company, which is aggressively moving its core business to the cloud, is seeing good traction for the service in India.
“From a growth perspective, we are the fastest-growing cloud company, and from the revenue perspective, we are the second largest company in the applications space globally. We are seeing rapid acceleration in India as well,” Mr. Sengupta said.
“We want to bring simplicity to enterprise part of it. Cloud is not just about capex vs opex model. This is just one of the drivers for growth, but the most important reason today for adoption of cloud is simplification of technology and user-driven adoption,” he explained.
