Microsoft plans to invest $3 billion to expand its artificial intelligence and cloud Azure services in India, fueling its revenue growth engine in the world's most populous country.
The firm, which has been operating in India for more than two decades, will also train an additional 10 million people in the country with AI, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at an event in Bengaluru on Tuesday.
“The infrastructure and skills investments we are announcing today reaffirm our commitment to making India AI-first and will help greatly benefit people and organizations across the country,” said Nadella. “The rate of diffusion of AI in India is exciting.”
India is a key overseas market for American tech giants Billions of dollars poured in Over the past two decades they have courted business in building and scaling their operations in the South Asian market where they serve millions of users.
Competition is done intense Microsoft has aggressively expanded its offerings with new AI capabilities within the hyperscaler in recent quarters. E-commerce group Amazon said this in 2023 It is planned to invest 12.7 billion dollars In its India business by 2030.
Microsoft, among India's top cloud and AI providers, operates three datacenter regions in India and plans to prepare a fourth to go live next year, the company said. The $3 billion investment will be deployed to build a scalable AI computing ecosystem to serve India's AI startup and research community.
India has cemented its place on the world map as one of the largest and fastest growing developing markets in the world More than 17 million of them in India use Microsoft's Github. Several technology executives, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and AMD chief Lisa Su Visited India in recent monthsPartly to court developers.
Microsoft also said it has signed an AI MoU with it SasboomA community for B2B startups in India. As part of the collaboration, the two will seek to promote entrepreneurship in small Indian towns and cities and help attract an additional $1.5 billion in VC funding for Indian AI and SaaS startups.
Microsoft is already seeing many of its clients in South Asian markets use the new technology to bring efficiency to their businesses, Nadella said. Some of its clients in India include Infosys, Air India, Meesho, Tech Mahindra, Federal Bank, Apollo, MakeMyTrip, HCL Tech, Manipal, Icertis and InMobi. IT firm Persistent is using Microsoft 365 Copilot's “contract assist” to cut negotiation time by 70%, Nadella said.