Microsoft To Invest $3 Billion In India Over Two Years: CEO Nadella
The investment will include the establishment of new data centers, Satya Nadella said.
Microsoft Corp. plans to invest $3 billion in India in cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure and skilling over the next two years, Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said on his visit to India.
Nadella was talking at the Microsoft AI Tour event in Bengaluru. The investment will include the establishment of new data centers. “I am really excited to announce the single largest expansion we have ever done in India by putting $3 billion dollars to expand our Azure capacity,” the Microsoft CEO said.
“I had a chance to meet PM Modiji. It was fantastic—it was great just to listen to all of his examples, his vision around how he wants to drive through AI mission. The combination of really the yojanas he has, the India stack, the entrepreneurial energy in this country, and the demographics —both on the consumer and the business side—is all getting into a virtuous cycle. So, that's why we feel fantastic about bringing core computer capability for the next generation AI,” Nadella added.
In India, Microsoft has multiple Azure regions in multiple locations—Central, South and West of India and it has also built capacity with Jio, the CEO said. Globally, the company has over 60 Azure regions and over 300 data centres.
Nadella in his keynote said that the company is seeing fantastic momentum in India. Multiple companies—Bank of Baroda, ClearTax, ICICI Lombard and MakeMyTrip have built with Copilot. “The diffusion rate of technology in India is amazing,” he said.
Further, Microsoft currently has 17 million or 1.7 crore members on GitHub from India. Nadella said that India will have the largest developer community on GitHub by 2028.
Microsoft To Train One Crore People In India
Microsoft will also support the country’s long-term competitiveness by training 10 million or one crore people over the next five years with AI skills, as part of the second edition of its ADVANTA(I)GE India program, Nadella said during his keynote address.
In 2024, Microsoft launched the ADVANTA(I)GE India initiative with the goal of training two million or 20 lakh people in AI skills by 2025. Microsoft has surpassed this target ahead of schedule, with 2.4 million, or 24 lakh individuals trained in under a year. Notably, 65% of the participants were women, and 74% came from tier-2 and tier-3 cities.
