Microsoft plans to invest $3 billion to expand capacity for its artificial intelligence and cloud Azure services in India and also upskill an additional 10 million people in the country with AI, the software giant’s chief executive said Tuesday.
“The investments in infrastructure and skilling we are announcing today reaffirm our commitment to making India AI-first, and will help ensure people and organizations across the country benefit broadly,” Satya Nadella said at an event in Bengaluru. “India is rapidly becoming a leader in AI innovation, unlocking new opportunity across the country.”
The software giant, among the top cloud and AI providers in India, operates three datacenter regions in India and plans to make its fourth ready to go live next year, the company said. The $3 billion investment will be deployed to develop a scalable AI computing ecosystem to serve India’s AI startups and research community.
Microsoft also said it has signed an AI memorandum of understanding with SaaSBoomi, a community for B2B startups in India. As part of the collaboration, the two will seek to promote entrepreneurship in smaller Indian cities and towns, they said. The two will also aim to 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 the South Asian market use its newest technologies to bring efficiencies 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 reduce negotiation time by 70%, Nadella said.
India is a key overseas market for American tech giants that have poured tens of billions of dollars in building and scaling their operations in the world’s most populous nation over the past two decades as they work to court businesses serving hundreds of millions of users.
The competition has intensified among hyperscalers in recent quarters as Microsoft aggressively broadens its AI offerings. Amazon said in 2023 that it planned to invest $12.7 billion in its India business by 2030.
India is also one of the world’s largest market for developers. More than 17 million of them in India use Microsoft’s Github. Nadella said the company will train 10 million people in India by 2030.
This is a developing story. More to follow…
