Adobe remains bullish on a rapidly expanding digital India

Adobe Acrobat Reader, Photoshop, PDF and some other Adobe tools are household names in India and the relevance of these is only increasing with digital connectivity growing exponentially in the country, claimed Prativa Mohapatra, VP & MD, Adobe India in an interview. Excerpts:

What makes Adobe so excited to be in India?

GSMA Intelligence’s numbers indicate that mobile connections in India were equivalent to 81.3% of the total population in January 2022. The number of mobile connections in the country increased by 34 million (+3.1%) between 2021 and 2022. Digital connectivity will only further increase in the years to come and anyone, anywhere with a digital device has access to digital documents/tools, including Adobe’s range of solutions. In fact, tools such as Adobe Acrobat Reader and Photoshop are household names and hold a significant market share in India.
Designers, photographers, filmmakers, illustrators, graphic professionals, creative artists, businesses, governments and start-ups have relied on Adobe products for years as their go-to tools. With the explosion of the creator economy, more solopreneurs, and small business owners are now able to express themselves creatively, whether it’s for a side gig or a key critical element of their full-time profession. Adobe Creative Cloud offers a vast portfolio of goods and services in every creative field, including imaging, photography, design, video, and 3D and immersive solutions.

How do you envision the future of creativity in a post-pandemic world?

Our recent ‘Future of creativity’ survey revealed that there are 303 million creators globally. The creator economy has the potential to reshape so many aspects of society – personal fulfillment, social issues, and even the economy. Creativity is going to be a vital skill for the future economy, the relevance, and potential for which is growing at a rapid pace. At Adobe, we believe everyone has a story to tell and it’s our responsibility to empower these creators to convey their own true stories effectively. The idea is to let the creativity flow by enabling a digital environment of seamless collaboration and creation, as people redefine the world around them.
Technology is the facilitator for creativity and therefore everyone must embrace it to thrive in the digital-first world, especially in the post-pandemic world. In fact, according to our report, 165 million + creators joined the Creator Economy since 2020 and one in four people globally are creators contributing to online spaces! Out of these, 48% of creators are universally motivated by the same goal: freedom of expression. By the way, India sits right at the heart of a content explosion.

How do you see the passion economy coming up?

The passion economy is certainly on the rise. For gig workers and side hustlers, the passion economy presents a new way to capitalise on creativity by connecting these creators with engaged communities who share their passions and can explore a way to monetise this passion. According to our study, some 39% of creators aspire to become business owners aligned with their creative hobbies.
Creativity and creative expression in the new world order, and creators have an incredible amount of power and opportunity owing to rapid digital transformations. The impact of creativity is visible, also creators are eager to engage with their audience more effectively. For instance, creative classrooms, to revamp the education system. We are now seeing a renaissance in creativity as a key success differentiator for businesses to leverage newer ideas to inspire, communicate and connect with their customers.

What is Adobe’s contribution to the next level of business transformation in India?

There have been tectonic shifts seen in the creator economy, even before the pandemic. As per Oxford Economies’ report, YouTube content creators alone contributed a whopping ₹6,800 crore to the Indian Economy in 2020. And this number will have surely gone up substantially since then.
Digital transformation is here and now, and as India leapfrogs further into the digital age and goes through the next level of transformation to become a $1 trillion digital economy, customer experience management presents a massive opportunity for businesses to gain a competitive edge. With Adobe’s customer experience management category, we empower businesses, whether big or small and individuals in their digital transformation journeys. With Creative Cloud, we are giving anyone, anywhere the tools to express their creative potential, and fuel and transform this creator economy. Adobe has been accelerating document productivity and pushing the paperless agenda of various government bodies in India with Adobe Document Cloud. The shift to remote work has made digital workflows even more mission-critical. Adobe is also enabling enterprises to harness the power of digital documents to bolster business success via various solutions like Adobe Sign and PDF, plus Adobe Experience Cloud is powering digital businesses for their cloud requirements.

Tell us about your R&D activities in India

India is one of the most strategic and fastest-growing markets globally and in the APAC region for Adobe. With around 7,000 employees, it is the second-largest establishment for us after North America and home to over 1/3rd of Adobe’s global innovations across our three cloud businesses. Adobe India is a key contributor to both our intellectual property creation and business growth globally. We have seen a solid track record of growth across the enterprise and consumer segments backed by our teams in India.
Moving forward, we continue to stay committed to enabling businesses across sectors as diverse as BFSI, education and skilling as well as retail with category-leading digital solutions and willingness to partner with them to chart the next stage in their growth journey.

What is going to be your Industry 4.0 products and software?

On our mission to change the world through digital experiences, we at Adobe are always looking around the corner for technologies and ideas that can inspire, transform, and move the world forward. With the Industry 4.0 revolution, the manufacturing industry is imagining and designing its products with next-gen tech. In this context, our tools such as Substance 3D bring an ecosystem of apps and content empowering product designers across all disciplines and industries to streamline design workflows, and to raise product visualisation to new levels of realism and detail. We are constantly innovating ourselves to empower businesses to build and deliver personalised customer experiences at scale, with accelerated content velocity, seamless customer journeys, and real-time customer data. We are also metaverse ready.