AWS plans to invest $12.7 billion in India, a major escalation and apparent reversal by the biggest cloud provider.
According to TechCrunch, AWS plans to invest $12.7 billion in India by 2030. The company had originally planned to invest $4.4 billion in South Asia, following an investment of $3.7 billion in India.
“AWS is committed to driving positive social and economic impact in India. In addition to building cloud infrastructure and helping local customers and partners digitally transform, we have trained more than four million people in India with cloud skills since 2017, and invested in six utility-scale renewable energy projects to meet our global 100% renewable energy goal by 2025,” said Puneet Chandok, president of commercial business at AWS India and South Asia.
The investment will create “more beneficial ripple effects, supporting India on its path to becoming a global digital powerhouse,” he added.
AWS says its expansion will support 131,700 jobs in construction, engineering, and telecommunications.
As TechCrunch points out, the investments comes at a time when Amazon has scaled back other parts of its business in India, a move that led some to question its commitment to the Indian market. India has been growing in importance for other tech companies, with Apple and Foxconn moving a significant amount of manufacturing to the country, making Amazon’s apparent pullback all the more odd.
The Indian government welcomed Amazon’s announcement:
“PM Narendra Modi’s Digital India vision is driving expansion of cloud & data centers in India,” said Rajeev Chandrashekhar, minister of state for electronics and information technology, skill development and entrepreneurship in India.
“India cloud and the underlying data center infrastructure are important elements of India’s digital infrastructure and ecosystem. I welcome the Amazon Web Services investment of $12.7 billion to expand their data centers in India. It will certainly catalyze India’s digital economy. MeitY is also working on a Cloud & Data Center Policy to catalyze innovation, sustainability, and growth of India cloud.”
