Accelerating investment in an agile cloud infrastructure is seen as a part of the solution to the challenges arising from the spread of the pandemic Covid-19.

"Strategic investments in technology will become imperative to minimize the adverse impact and make businesses more resilient. The role of providers will become crucial in helping organisations flatten the curve and leverage cloud in their next normal," said Rishu Sharma, Principal Analyst for cloud & artificial intelligence at IDC India.

India public cloud services (PCS) market is projected to touch $7.1 billion by 2024 growing at a CAGR of 20.3 per cent between 2019-2024.

Although most organisations in India have adopted cloud at some stage, the current pandemic situation has now enabled them to spend more on public cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solutions, and software-as-a-service (SaaS).

From a segment perspective, SaaS forms the largest component of the overall public cloud services market in India, followed by IaaS and PaaS.

With the changing strategy, over 56 per cent of the Indian organisations plan to increase their spend on SaaS services, as a result of Covid-19.

In 2019, the top two providers in the SaaS segment accounted for nearly 52 per cent of the total SaaS market.

In the IaaS segment, the top two providers accounted for over 78 per cent in 2019.

"Organisations are planning to leverage cloud for digital innovation and accessing innovative ecosystems, in addition to gaining flexibility and meeting up additional demands," said Swapnil Shende, Senior Market Analyst for artificial intelligence at IDC India.