About eight in ten Indian Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), or 81 per cent, plan to increase their Cloud spending in 2025, as they scale investments in customer relationship management (CRM), financial services and business intelligence software, a report showed on Thursday.

Meanwhile, top digital adoption challenges that MSMEs currently face are high software costs, budgetary constraints, lack of tech skills, and integration hassles, according to the report by global technology company Zoho.

The number of MSMEs in India is expected to grow from 6.3 crore, to around 7.5 crore, making it a crucial sector for the country’s GDP growth.

“This MSME Day, we commemorate the vital role of these businesses in our country,” said Praval Singh, VP Marketing and Customer Experience, Zoho.

A prominent hurdle these businesses face as they scale is the lack of feature-rich and accessible solutions in the market, he added.

Nearly 73 per cent of the respondents claimed that they were optimistic about their growth in the next six months.

The businesses are, however, concerned about three aspects of the current macroeconomic landscape, which are economic uncertainty (54 per cent), inflation (44 per cent), and a shortage of skilled labour (33 per cent).

As the focus of MSMEs on digital experiences becomes stronger, and they aim to improve their growth prospects they bank on IT and Cloud solutions.

About 97 per cent of the respondents allocate up to 20 per cent of their revenue to their IT and Cloud needs, the findings showed