New Delhi: The joint effort of governmental authorities, education organizations and skills groups, and technology suppliers would enable India to become the second-largest cloud talent centre in the world, said IT industry company Nasscom today.

In research in partnership with Draup, Nasscom claimed India is now third in the world, holding 6,08,000 cloud experts (FY2021).

"India is expected to have 1.4-1.5 million cloud professionals by 2025. (baseline growth). With a reasonably aggressive skilling road- map, India may achieve a 1.7-1.8 million cloud talent pool by 2025, with anticipated demand for over 2 million professionals "'Cloud Skills: Powering India's Digital DNA,' according to the research.

The study team included Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Accenture as strategic partners. By 2022, India's cloud market is expected to have grown by 26% year on year to $5.6 billion.

Migration to cloud-based services will give a substantial competitive edge for SMEs and businesses in the new normal, with fast digital acceleration and everything becoming on-demand and need-based.

This is anticipated to increase dramatically as cloud usage spreads across industries.

The major growth drivers for such a move, according to the study, have been infrastructure agility, flexibility, and resilience on the cloud with considerably reduced costs, especially during the pandemic.

Another driver of cloud demand is the Indian SaaS (software as a service) startup environment, according to the report.

According to Nasscom, SaaS businesses in India employ over 40,000 people across all job categories, more than any other type of digital company.

India's cloud talent pool is anticipated to increase 2.4 times to over 1.5 million by 2025, with a baseline growth rate of 24% CAGR.

However, there is a pressing need to scale talent - particularly people with the proper skill sets - to fulfill this need, according to the report.

According to the research, India can boost its cloud talent pool to between 1.7 and 1.8 million people with a more aggressive talent development strategy (30%+ growth rate) and become the world's second-largest cloud talent centre.

"During the pandemic, cloud usage accelerated as businesses concentrated on developing hybrid work patterns, collaboration infrastructure, and business continuity.” Cloud has evolved from a back-end to a front-end (business-facing) technology, allowing on-demand access to resources," said Nasscom President Debjani Ghosh.

A concentrated public-private collaboration and large-scale skilling are essential for India to carve out a distinct identity as a worldwide centre for cloud solutions, she noted. Nasscom has partnered with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to launch the FutureSkills PRIME programme to upskill talent in new technologies, and cloud skills are a primary focus on this platform, she added.

According to the research, demand for cloud solutions is rising at an exponential rate in India and throughout the world, resulting in a larger demand for cloud expertise. The demand for cloud skills greatly outnumbers the current supply, necessitating an emphasis on upskilling across all stakeholders, according to the report.