Digital Transformation in India after covid 19 outbreak: Bridging Digital Divides

COVID-19 outbreak took the entire world into a standstill affecting every aspect brutally. This led the entire world to ponder for a substitute way to keep moving irrespective of pandemic duration. Immediately, the shift started compelling countries to move online, accelerating digital transformation in India and upgrading digital infrastructure. The institution with an online education system, corporate firms adopting digital business models to maintain operation and revenue flow, media & entertainment shifting to OTT/digital platform, financial & accounting model fast-tracking with software. Children and their Parents taking android phones & at-home Internet access for attending class remotely, employees adopting work from home, doctors moving to an online platform for appointments, retail business shifting to the online market in the form of e-commerce platform, economy adoption of e-money such as cryptocurrency, etc.

The organizations adopted digital transformation technologies such as Internet-of-Things (IoT), Cloud, Blockchain (BC), Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and software, website & mobile applications. This helped the economy/ institutions/ industry‘ track and trace’ the system and facilitated the scientist to research smoothly about the virus and fast-track the vaccine search. These major transformations determine the incredible potential of the digital platform. However, several countries including India have highlighted the huge ‘Digital Divides’ during the pandemic. COVID-induced digital acceleration compelled some sectors/regions/groups of people to fill the gap of the digital divide. Others suffered extensively and failed to follow the same pace. The government took initiatives and emphasis on digital strategies to bridge digital divides for a post-COVID era. 

Digital Transformation in Educational Sector in the Covid-19 era

The education sector took a dramatic shift across the world to the online mode. Since the beginning of 2020, Covid-19 started spreading tremendously and countries implemented lockdown. Educational institutions promptly took action and started preparing schools, colleges, and universities for online classes to video conferencing platforms like Zoom and Google Meet. In India, around 320 million students were adversely affected by the pandemic and shifted to e-learning. However, with huge regional and household inequalities to internet access and technology, this transition for all students and educators was not possible.

The covid-19 pandemic highlights the long-standing inequality and a digital divide issue in India. This requires strong digitization policies and infrastructure to keep the institutions prepared for emergencies. While some institutions in other countries have shifted completely to the online mode of education for the forthcoming academic year in institutions such as the California State system in the US and the University of Cambridge in the UK. 

Impact of the Pandemic on the Corporate Sector and its digital drive

Digital Transformation in India was fast-tracked in the corporate and business sector promptly to sustain in the market and keep moving with revenue flow. According to the survey, 50 % of the companies said that adopting digitalization saved their business, helped employees to fight the pandemic, and improved the customer experience. Employees started adjusting to new "normals” – with webinars and meetings going completely online, office shifting to work from home, with new emerging patterns of work. With the sudden changes where companies barely got any time for new setup and planning, digital platforms served as the backbone to companies across most organizations, whether in industry, private, or government.

The COVID-19 crisis worried SMEs and start-ups struggling to exist, and large companies applying digital influence over our digital drive. Many MNCs across the world are still exercising the work-from-home operation running in parallel to the competitors. Many private companies fall apart failing to adapt to the digital transformation and employees experience layoffs in huge numbers.

Digital Revolution on Retail Sector in Pandemic Times

Since the outbreak of Covid-19, consumers’ behavior has changed tremendously with long queues and panic among buyers seeking essential products. Retail businesses and customers faced challenges that led the government to take initiative and fulfill essential needs with the help of a digital platform.

Retail online e-commerce platforms like grocers and Grofers worked overtime to meet the demand. Large conglomerates like Walmart, Amazon, and Tesco had to hire employees. The retail business adopted digital technology like online grocery ordering & curbside pickup, Cashier-less checkouts, Mobile checkout apps, Online payment, Smart grocery carts, etc. Non-essential retailers such as clothing, electronic accessories, home decoration, etc. almost all businesses had to move online. According to research data, e-commerce sales increased by 32.4% in 2020 while brick-and-mortar sales decreased by 3.2%

Digital transformation in the healthcare sector in response to COVID-19 

Public Health has been the centre of the Covid-19 crisis. To handle the crises, the ministry of health implemented measures and harness digital technologies. The ministry started the digital fast-track system in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. This was done to fasten the online appointment system, case identification, population surveillance, evaluation of interventions, contact tracing, online health consultancy & therapy, etc. The health sector adopted a citizen-centric strategy and patient-centric strategy by launching mobile applications like Arogya Setu. This helped India extensively in contact tracing, self-assessment, syndromic mapping, and digital service. The app broke all records with more than 100 million Indian people installing it in 40 days.

These rapid responses influence billions of mobile phones, connected devices, large online datasets, comparatively low-cost computing resources, and machine learning. The public health future is likely to become increasingly digital with the use of digital technologies. This is to reinforce pandemic management and prepare the health system for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.

Media and Entertainment Sector digital transformation in Pandemic Times

With the emergence of Covid-19, consumer behavior in the media and entertainment sector changed tremendously. People started to stay at home to maintain social distance resulting in a huge shift to the OTT platform (Over-the-top) via various streaming sites like Netflix, Prime Video, Zee 5, Hotstar, etc. The study states that during the Covid-19 pandemic, the OTT viewers' count exponentially increased by a whopping 47%. These lockdown norms boost the growth opportunities for app developers and content platforms in the country.

With the closing down of multi-plex, big-screen cinemas, content providers shifted to online platforms. COVID-19 acted as a catalyst to quicken and strengthen the consumers’ behaviour, attracting them towards digital content and causing an uptick in demand for media and entertainment software solutions. Digital Trends adopted various models through the M & E Industry in the form of Personalized content, D2C video streaming, Ecosystem-based business model, AR/VR technology model, 5G Network, and Artificial Intelligence.

Impact of the Pandemic on the Banking Sector and digital drive

With the country experiencing a shutdown and disruption, banks started investing extensively in digital technologies to catch pace with the global competitors. According to the survey, Indian banking is becoming increasingly focused on analytics tools and employing big data. It also reveals that 67% of banking organizations aim to improve customer engagement with digital transformation in India. With the use of digital banking services, the traditional method of banking has completely changed with modern artificial intelligence. The Indian banking sector adopted a digital model to accelerate the technology for hassle-free transactions, bridge financial flow, etc. with affordable electronic devices.

Conclusion

Crisis is a catalyst to speed up changes and it almost can serve as an accelerant. In the wake of the outbreak, every sector from doctor's appointments to workouts to schooling to industry to institutions went online. Flashing back to digital presence 10 years before, no one could have imagined shifting from traditional to digital methods of operation and execution. As more people learned, worked, exercised, banked, relaxed, and even took medical care from home during Covid-19 people have realized the importance of digitalization. Those who succeeded in catching up with the changing pace and adopted the digital model sustained by achieving growth. However, there are still various sectors that are stubborn and stand to traditional businesses such as small vendors and shopkeepers who have failed to catch the pace are affected badly. Regardless of the crisis, the digital divide was seen extensively, however, digital technologies are rapidly transforming our lives making us depend on the way we work and live. As governments re-evaluate current digital policies as the result of the COVID-19 crisis, the demand to advance digital policies, infrastructure, and systems is required to support economic growth and navigate the post-pandemic future.

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