Digital works centre in Kochi expected to draw investment of ₹750 crore in three years

Tapping into the huge potential of digital worker services for automating business processes, electronics company Kloudpad is gearing up to set up in Kochi what it claims to be the world’s biggest centre for such services, entailing a proposed investment of ₹750 crore in three years.

The proposed facility will coordinate digital transformation services for more than 300 enterprise clients globally, especially from the U.S., the U.K., and Europe. Kloudpad would cater to the requirement by automating business processes through software robots or virtual employees developed using cognitive automation technology platforms, said company managing director Aromal Jayaraj Shikky.

“We aim to have 500 IT professionals and one lakh digital workers by 2025, by which time the investment would be raised to ₹750 crore,” he said.

Initially, the digital workers’ centre in Kerala will have 100 employees. The pioneering facility in the State will provide RPA (robotic process automatic) technology that makes it easy to build, deploy and manage software robots which emulate human actions while interacting with digital business systems.

Founded in 2012, Kloudpad plans to go global by opening centres in London, Amsterdam, and New York. “We are devising ways to mobilise public investments in the next three years. During 2020-22, we received technology support and investments from Microsoft,” said Mr. Shikky.

While the global expenses towards RPA total $3 billion (₹24,000 crore), the worldwide market for hyper-automation is estimated to be ₹4.75 lakh-crore. “Making best use of this, we aim at making Kloudpad a unicorn [with a value of over $1 billion]. In fact, Kloudpad is a leader in world’s only digital worker marketplace — the Botstore,” he said.

Kloudpad CEO Abhishek Jayaraj Shikky said Kerala’s rich resource pool of talented aspirants for internet-based jobs prompted the company to launch its centre in Kochi. “The State has huge scope for development in this sector. We are connecting Indian talent to global enterprises through the world’s only cloud-native digital transformation services platform — the DWS,” he said.

Kloudpad’s centre has been recognised as a ‘centre of excellence’ in automation by Automation Anywhere, the two-decade-old American company that develops RPA.