Microsoft just announced an investment of $17.5 billion in India over the next four years, the technology giant’s largest in Asia. amazon has followed in his footsteps with 35,000 million dollars until 2030. Google already had announced 15,000 million for the same period. The big tech companies They are turning to the Asian subcontinent like never before, and it makes all the sense in the world.
Why India has become irresistible. The Asian country brings together three characteristics that make it a strategic target for technology companies: a population of more than 1.4 billion inhabitants with growing access to the internet and smartphones, infrastructure costs significantly lower than in other Asian markets such as Japan or Singapore, and a government that actively promotes digital transformation.
According to Ericsson dataan active smartphone in India consumes an average of 36 GB per month, 44% more than in North America and 71% more than the global average. Additionally, the country’s data center capacity has increased 2.5-fold since 2021, reaching 1.5 gigawatts.
The perfect time for investments. The race for artificial intelligence has accelerated this trend. Microsoft plans to open its largest cloud region in India, located in Hyderabad, by mid-2026. The company will also expand its three existing data center regions in Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune.
For its part, Google will build an AI hub in Visakhapatnam which will include data centres, power sources and fiber optic networks. These investments seek to stay ahead of the competition in a market where demand for cloud services and AI tools is growing rapidly among companies, startups, and government agencies.
Beyond data centers. Investments are not limited to physical infrastructure. Microsoft has committed to train 20 million workers from this country in AI skills by 2030, doubling its initial goal. The company claims to have already trained 5.6 million people since January 2025. Amazon, for its part, claims to have digitized to more than 12 million small businesses and enabled $20 billion in cumulative e-commerce exports.
Both companies are integrating their technologies into the Indian government’s digital public platforms, such as the e-Shram and National Career Service systems, which serve more than 310 million uncontracted workers.
The battle for digital sovereignty. A key element of this strategy is the proposal of “sovereign” solutions. Microsoft has launched its Sovereign Public Cloud and Sovereign Private Cloud specifically for customers in India, allowing data and workloads to remain within the country’s borders. As the company announced, Microsoft 365 Copilot will process data within India by the end of 2025, making the country one of the first four global markets to receive this capability.
“This investment signals India’s rise as a reliable technology partner for the world,” counted Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Electronics and Information Technology.
There are challenges. Despite investment enthusiasm, India presents significant obstacles. Irregular power supply, high energy costs and water shortages in several regions complicate the expansion of resource-intensive data centers. These factors could slow the deployment of AI infrastructure and raise operating expenses for cloud providers.
However, New Delhi is deploying incentives for AI and semiconductor projects, it has relaxed some regulatory requirements and fosters alliances with telecommunications operators and local technology companies to continue adding value to the global AI race, from local territory.
Capacity or mass consumerism. The interesting thing would be to know if India will obtain real technological capacity of its own in the face of so much investment or if it will simply consolidate itself as another consumer market for Big Tech. The government has approved semiconductor projects worth more than $18 billion under its India Semiconductor Mission, seeking to reduce dependence on imported chips. “India is becoming a hot spot for technology investments,” pointed out Dan Ives, analyst at Wedbush Securities. It remains to be seen what all this materializes into.
Cover image | İsmail Enes Ayhan and Naveed Ahmed
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