When it comes to artificial intelligence-related investment, India has been the top place for the investors, from tech giants like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, many more companies have been lining up to make investment in India’s promising digital innovation. What makes India the preferred destination is the cheap data and growing population. India has always remained a high-growth market for many giants like Amazon and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, despite the regulatory hurdles.
What investment has Amazon promised in India?
An investment of $35 billion by 2030 was announced by Amazon on Wednesday, making its ties further deep with the largest global markets. Sharing details of the investment plan, Amazon shared that in coming years, it will invest in areas such as artificial intelligence and logistics infrastructure, cloud computing and quick commerce businesses. Amit Agarwal, SVP, Emerging Markets at Amazon said, this investment would likely create an additional 3.8 million direct and indirect jobs.
Microsoft $17.5 billion investment by 2029
On December 9, Microsoft’s chief executive officer Satya Nadella met PM Narendra Modi and promised an investment of $17.5 billion by 2029. He even said that India’s ‘virtuous cycle’ for tech involving policy, and market is “magic”. Investment will be made in cloud and AI expansion and also boost the current operations across India this includes the current 22,000 employees across Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Gurugram, Noida and other Indian cities.
Apart from Microsoft, Google has also made an announcement in October that it will make a $15 billion investment to build a grand scale AI hub in Visakhapatnam, making this the biggest investment after the United States. This AI hub will be an integration of infrastructure and data centres, first of a kind gigawatt-scale data centre campus in India. Such an investment will create about 1 lakh jobs by 2030.
Cognizant’s CEO Ravi Kumar met PM Modi and committed to boost India’s AI First initiative, the company also shared a plan to boost AI adoption and skill building. Many reports have stated that OpenAI is in discussion with Tata Consultancy Services and would soon inaugurate the India chapter of Stargate, this ChatGPT-maker’s AI project.
What effort is the Indian government taking to promote AI?
Last year the India AI Mission with a budget of over Rs 10,000 crore was launched, IT ministry in November launched the AI governance guidelines to support innovation in the AI field. Apart from this, the Centre also announced that a Centre of Excellence in AI would be established for education to make India’s AI-ready workforce. States like Andhra Pradesh and Telangana had also launched their AI roadmap so that more investment can be drawn. Telcom like Jio, Bharti Airtel also joined the AI bandwagon. As International companies are coming to India for AI investment, homegrown companies like Jio and Bharti Airtel, have also ramped up their AI-related plans. These telecoms have already offered free subscriptions of Gemini Pro and Perplexity Pro.
