Amazon's cloud unit to invest $13 bln in India

Amazon’s cloud computing unit will invest 1.06 trillion rupees ($13 billion) in India by the end of this decade, doubling down on its past investments to cater to the growing demand for such services in one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies.

This comes on top of its $6.5 billion investment in e-commerce in India, where it has rapidly expanded over the years but faces a strict regulatory environment that forces it to run only a marketplace.

The latest investment will be used to build its cloud infrastructure in India and will support over 100,000 full-time jobs annually, Amazon Web Services (AWS) said in a statement on Thursday. With this, the total planned investment in India adds up to about $16.4 billion by 2030.

The company already runs two data centers in the Indian subcontinent – one in Mumbai which was launched in 2016, and another in Hyderabad, which started in 2022.

The cloud platform offers more than 200 services, including storage, networking and artificial intelligence.

Amazon’s move comes as India steps up efforts to attract more big-ticket investments in the digital space to address the spike in demand for data storage and services from corporate and government bodies.

India’s public cloud services market is expected to touch $13 billion by 2026, climbing at a compound annual growth rate of 23.1% for 2021-26, according to market intelligence provider IDC.

A host of global companies, including Microsoft Corp(MSFT.O) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google, have ramped up cloud investments in India in recent years amid New Delhi’s push to gain stricter oversight of Big Tech firms by nudging to store data locally.

The country is currently drafting a cloud and data center policy to regulate the sector. India’s broader tech sector, too, has attracted high-profile investments in recent months. U.S. networking equipment maker Cisco Systems (CSCO.O) earlier this month said it would start manufacturing from India to diversify its global supply chain, while Apple Inc (AAPL.O) supplier Foxconn(2317.TW) will invest $500 million to set up plants in the southern Indian state of Telangana.

($1 = 81.7800 Indian rupees)