Union Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology and Skill Development and Entrepreneurship visited Microsoft’s Hyderabad centre today.  The Microsoft announced its intention to establish India Data Centre region in Hyderabad to accelerate country’s digital momentum. According to study, Microsoft datacenter regions in India have added 1.5m jobs to the economy  over five years, including 169,000 new skilled IT jobs.

The announcement comes in the backdrop of accelerated Digitalization of products and services witnessed over the last 2 years. There has been a 14% reported rise in the daily data consumption average of 270 Petabytes from pre-lockdown period to an average of 308 Petabytes post-lockdown. Around 16% more time has been spent by smartphone users as compared to pre-COVID-19 period. Schools & Colleges resorting to online education coupled with work from home regulations led to a significant increase in data consumption.

“India’s Digital Economy is expanding and driving the growth of Indian economy towards the goal of $5 trillion economy” said Mr Rajeev Chandrasekhar & credited PM Narendra Modi for laying a strong foundation of technology through the Digital India Programme launched in 2015.

“The Digital India Programme had set out 3 clear objectives to be achieved.

1. To transform lives of citizens.
2. To expand economic opportunities.
3. To create strategic capabilities in certain areas of technology.

The report carding of achievements under Digital India Programme would divulge that objectives number 1 and 2 have been largely met. India now has the world’s largest digital identity system - Aadhar, India is successfully driving the World’s largest technology driven vaccination campaign through indigenously developed CoWIN platform, Development and use of Aarogya Setu app for Covid management & leading the world in Digital Payments, Direct Benefit transfers of Subsidy and Fintech technology. It clearly demonstrates the world that India has become one of the pre-eminent Nations in the use of technology not just in conventional areas of R&D, technology development & innovations, but in the use of technology to empower & transform citizen’s lives”, said Mr Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

He further added that the resilience shown by India during the Covid Pandemic, the ‘bounce back’ of the economy as the fastest growing economy in the world - receiving highest ever FDI, creating Unicorns at a fast pace, can all be attributed to the investments made in technology over the last 7 years under the Digital India Programme.

Speaking on the rise in number of Indian Startups and Unicorns, Mr Rajeev Chandrasekhar affirmed that India has become one of the world’s most vibrant startup ecosystem and the Narendra Modi Government is making India's startup and digital economy grow faster than ever before. 

Going Forward, “the rapid rate of digitization is going to pose both challenges as well as opportunities. To tap the opportunities, we at MeitY, are working as per MeitY’s 1000 Day Vision plan. Data Centres are an important element of our Digital ecosystem that is soon going to be the best in the world. We are conducting consultations with all stakeholders for a New National Data Centre Policy. PM Narendra Modi is committed to make India a Global Data Centre Hub”, added Mr Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

Microsoft today announced its intent to establish its latest datacenter region in Hyderabad, Telangana. This strategic investment is aligned with Microsoft's commitment to help customers thrive  in a cloud and AI-enabled digital economy and will become part of the world’s largest cloud infrastructure.

Customer demand for cloud as a platform for digital transformation, driving economic growth and societal progress across India, is increasing. According to IDC*, Microsoft datacenter regions in India contributed $9.5B revenue to the  economy between 2016 and 2020. Beyond GDP impact, the IDC report estimated 1.5 million jobs were added to the  economy, including 169,000 new skilled IT jobs.

The Hyderabad datacenter region will be an addition to the existing network of three regions in India across Pune,  Mumbai, and Chennai. It will offer the entire Microsoft portfolio across the cloud, data solutions, artificial  intelligence (AI), productivity tools, and customer relationship management (CRM) with advanced data security, for  enterprises, start-ups, developers, education, and government institutions. 

To support customer needs for high availability and resiliency, Microsoft launched Azure Availability Zones in  December 2021 in its Central India datacenter region. This forms the most extensive network of datacenters in the  country with disaster recovery provisions and coverage of seismic zones. 

RKJ/M