The Indian Public Cloud Services (PCS) market is likely to reach $13.5 billion by 2026, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24 per cent for 2021-26, a new report has shown.

In 2021, the revenue of public cloud market, including infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solutions, and software-as-a-service (SaaS), reached $4.6 billion in India, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC).

"With digital innovation leading the top business objectives for Indian organisations, cloud adoption is set to accelerate in 2022," said Rishu Sharma, Associate Research Director, Cloud and Artificial Intelligence, IDC India.

SaaS continued to be the largest component of the overall public cloud services market, followed by IaaS and PaaS in 2021.

Public cloud spending continued to increase among enterprises, with the top two service providers holding more than 45 per cent of the Indian public cloud services market, the report noted.

India continues to be among the fastest-growing market for public cloud service providers due to the robust demand from large enterprises, digital natives, and also from small and medium businesses in the country.

In 2021, enterprises continued to invest in public cloud to ensure business continuity, improve resilience and productivity, and drive digital innovation, said the IDC.

"Public cloud adoption continued to surge as enterprises invested in public cloud as part of their digital transformation initiatives to improve business resiliency and become a digital-first organisation," said Harish Krishnakumar, Senior Market Analyst, IDC India.

The increased spend is expected to continue as enterprises invest in emerging technologies like AI/ML, IoT, blockchain, etc., to automate processes and drive innovation with public cloud as the foundation, he added.

There has been an increased demand for Cloud-based security applications as organisations expect part of their hybrid workforce to return to offices in 2022.