AWS Bets Big on India, Invests $12.7 Bn in Cloud Infrastructure

Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced its plans to invest $12.7 Bn (INR 1,05,600 crores) into cloud infrastructure in India by 2030. So far, this has been one of the biggest commitments ever made by cloud service providers. 

The reason: Amazon said that this investment had been made looking at the growing demand for their cloud services in India. 

Impact: The company claimed that this investment is estimated to contribute $23.3 Bn (INR 1,94,700 crores) to India’s GDP by 2030. It also said that it will support an estimated average of 1,31,700 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs in Indian businesses each year. These positions are part of the data center supply chain in India. This includes construction, facility maintenance, engineering, telecom, and others. 

The latest development comes against the backdrop of $3.7 Bn (INR 30,900) between 2016-2022, bringing AWS’s total investment in India to $16.4 Bn (INR 1,36,500 crores) by 2030 – boosting the country’s GDP, alongside supporting tens of thousands of jobs, and help customers innovate.

AWS chief Adam Selipsky took to Twitter to make this announcement. Selipsky said he is inspired to see how their infrastructure presence since 2016 has driven such tremendous progress. 

What About Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure? 

Amazon is not alone in this race, Microsoft Azure and GCP have also invested heavily in India for cloud infrastructure. For instance, Microsoft has invested over $1 Bn in India since 2014, and Google has invested over $500 Mn.

In terms of data centres, Amazon has a presence in two cities – the AWS Asia Pacific (Mumbai) region, launched in 2016, and the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region, launched in November 2022. These two regions are helping its Indian customers to run their workloads, store data, and service users with low latency. 

Microsoft has data centres in three cities, including Mumbai, Pune and Chennai. Google Cloud, on the other hand, has data centres in Mumbai and Delhi. Both these companies are expanding their presence in India, and are expected to invest more in the coming months. 

For instance, Microsoft had previously announced to invest $2 Bn in setting up one of India’s largest data centres in Hyderabad. Earlier this year, Google also claimed to invest $1 Bn in setting up new data centres and cloud infra in the county. While both are investing heavily in India’s cloud infrastructure, Amazon has announced the most significant commitment ever.