AWS to invest USD 12.7 billion into cloud infrastructure in India by 2030

Mumbai | Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Thursday announced plans to invest Rs 1,05,600 crore (USD 12.7 billion) into cloud infrastructure in India by 2030 as it looks to meet growing customer demand for cloud services in the country.

The planned investment in data centre infrastructure in India will support an estimated average of 1,31,700 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs in Indian businesses each year, Amazon's cloud computing unit AWS said in a statement.

These positions, including construction, facility maintenance, engineering, telecommunications, and other jobs, are part of the data centre supply chain in India.

In the statement, AWS said it plans to invest Rs 1,05,600 crore (USD 12.7 billion) into cloud infrastructure in India, and added its long-term commitment in India will reach Rs 1,36,500 crore (USD 16.4 billion) by 2030.

This follows AWS' investment of Rs 30,900 crore (USD 3.7 billion) between 2016 and 2022.

"This investment is estimated to contribute Rs 1,94,700 crore (USD 23.3 billion) to India's total gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030," the statement said.

AWS added that its investment in India has a ripple effect in the local economy in areas such as workforce development, training and skilling opportunities, community engagement, and sustainability initiatives.

"@awscloud has long been vested in India's growth as a digital powerhouse, and I'm inspired to see how our infrastructure presence since 2016 has driven such tremendous progress. Today we're announcing additional planned investment of USD 12.7 billion for cloud infrastructure in India," Adam Selipsky, CEO of AWS tweeted.

Selipsky added: "That will bring our total investment to USD 16.4 billion by 2030 -- boosting the country's GDP, supporting tens of thousands of jobs, and continuing to help customers innovate." AWS has two data centre infrastructure regions in India -- the AWS Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Region, launched in 2016, and the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region, launched in November 2022.

"The two AWS Regions are designed to provide Indian customers with multiple options to run workloads with even greater resilience and availability, securely store data in India, and serve end-users with low latency," it said.

AWS has invested more than Rs 30,900 crore in the AWS Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Region between 2016 and 2022. This included both capital and operating expenditures associated with constructing, maintaining, and operating the data centres in that region.

Its overall contribution to the GDP of India between 2016 and 2022 was more than Rs 38,200 crore (USD 4.6 billion), and the investment supported nearly 39,500 FTE jobs annually in Indian businesses, according to AWS estimates.

"PM Narendra Modi's Digital India vision is driving expansion of cloud and data centres in India," Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) Rajeev Chandrasekhar said.

The latest investment will catalyse India's digital economy.

"MeitY is also working on a Cloud and Data Centre Policy to catalyse innovation, sustainability, and growth of India Cloud," the minister said.

Puneet Chandok, president of commercial business - AWS India and South Asia at Amazon Web Services India, said the planned investment of Rs 1,05,600 crore by 2030 will "help create more beneficial ripple effects, supporting India on its path to becoming a global digital powerhouse." "A lot of our investments so far were in Mumbai region...so from 2016 to 2022 when we invested USD 3.7 billion...a lot of that was going into Mumbai region. We launched Hyderabad (region) in November 2022 that was around USD 4.4 billion of investment. And rest of investment will go across Hyderabad and Mumbai and we are also launching local zones in India," Chandok said on sidelines of AWS Summit.

Meanwhile, AWS said that hundreds of thousands of its customers in India run their workloads on AWS to drive cost savings, and accelerate innovation.

This includes government entities such as Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, public healthcare institutions like Aarogyasri Health Care Trust, large Indian enterprises such as Ashok Leyland, Axis Bank, HDFC Life and Titan, small and medium businesses like Havmor, Qube Cinema, and Narayana Nethralaya, and startups like BankBazaar, HirePro, M2P, and Yubi, among others.

The multi billion dollar investment announcement comes at a time when global digital giants are doubling down on their focus on India, and committing more capital to leverage the India growth opportunities, in an effort to meet rising demand for data storage and tech services from businesses and government entities.

India is emerging as a focal point of innovation and manufacturing even for the wider tech sector, fuelled by its rapidly developing digital economy, enabling policies and slew of incentives aimed at wooing international players.

US-based network gear maker Cisco last week announced it will manufacture products, including routers and switches, in Tamil Nadu to meet rising demand from Indian customers and to diversify its global supply chain.

Earlier this month, Apple CEO Tim Cook said India is an "incredibly exciting market" and a "major focus" for the company, as the Cupertino-based iPhone maker highlighted that business in India "set a quarterly record, grew very strong, double digits year-over-year".

Apple has charted an ambitious retail expansion in India last month, when it launched two retail outlets here, in Mumbai and Delhi, during Cook's first trip to the country in seven years.