Cloud computing and 3D software are changing the market for product design

Dhirender Mishra, manager of business research and advisory at Aranca, a global research and advisory firm, said “very good potential” exists for advanced product design software in the Indian market as usage has been very low until now. According to him, the CAD market is relatively mature and likely to grow from $450 million currently to about $700 million by 2021. Mishra said the government’s smart cities and Digital India initiatives might add one or two percentage points to the growth of the market. While Autodesk Inc. is the biggest company in the space, other prominent players include SolidWorks Corp. (owned by Dassault Systemes), PTC Inc. and Siemens AG, besides a few smaller companies.

One of the trends Mishra sees in the Indian market is the increasing usage of these solutions by companies in the AEC segment and even by some in the pharma industry. There have been some government-led initiatives too, to increase the penetration of CAD solutions among micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). A case in point, he said, is the tie-up between Autodesk and the Maharashtra government to provide free design tools to MSMEs with revenue of less than Rs1 crore.

“Among large enterprises, the growing trend has been to move from 2D to 3D software,” he said. On the impact of cloud computing, he said that while smaller companies are more likely to adopt it more widely, the next five years could see some major shifts in how design software is used.