Amazon's AWS Sets $12.7B Course For India's Booming Cloud Requirements

This story was originally published on the Benzinga India portal.

In an ambitious move, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) announced on Thursday its plans to pour $12.7 billion to bolster its cloud infrastructure in India by 2030. This comes as the e-commerce behemoth redoubles efforts to expand its Amazon Web Services (AWS) in a critical foreign market, despite recent cutbacks in other areas of the region.

What Happened? According to a TechCrunch report, the investment marks a significant increase from the company’s pledge last year to invest $4.4 billion (₹36,178.24 crores) in Indian AWS by 2030, underlining Amazon’s intensified commitment.

So far, Amazon has invested $3.7 billion (₹30,422.61 crores) in Indian AWS infrastructure and operates two data center regions within the South Asian nation. The additional funding aims to generate around 131,700 full-time jobs in diverse fields such as engineering, telecommunications, and construction.

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Cloud usage has seen substantial growth in India recently, with businesses from various sectors embracing it. Amazon’s cloud division currently leads the market and boasts a roster of major clients in India, including the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Axis Bank, HDFC Life, BankBazaar, Niti Aayog, PhysicsWallah, and Acko.

Puneet Chandok, president of commercial business, AWS India and South Asia, stressed the company’s commitment to India’s positive socio-economic impact.

Chandok highlighted the company’s contributions, including cloud skills training for over four million Indians since 2017 and investments in six utility-scale renewable energy projects to meet a global 100% renewable energy goal by 2025.

India’s Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Rajeev Chandrashekhar, welcomed Amazon’s investment, attributing the growing cloud and data center expansion in India to PM Narendra Modi’s Digital India vision.

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