Government Seeks Public-Private Push for Data Centre Growth, Says Jitin Prasada
Jitin Prasada calls for joint government and private sector efforts to attract data centre investment, create jobs and keep citizens' data secure in India.
The central government wants the public and private sectors to work in tandem to draw investment, generate employment and expand domestic data centre capacity as infrastructure demand climbs, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Jitin Prasada said on Sunday.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Microsoft AI Infrastructure Summit India in New Delhi, Prasada described data centres as critical infrastructure for the country's economic and technological progress in the years ahead. He pointed to Microsoft's latest investment as a step that would help keep citizens' data within India, stressing that sensitive information must remain secure.
"We want both the government and the private sector to work together so that investments flow in, employment opportunities are created, and because data centers will become crucial in the coming times," he said.
The minister said data centres would play an ambitious role for any country in the coming era and that efforts were actively underway, in line with the Prime Minister's vision, to attract such investment to India. He also noted that data footprints are expanding rapidly through artificial intelligence, a trend he said would be pivotal for nations, with India playing a key role.
Earlier at the summit, Puneet Chandok, President of Microsoft India and South Asia, announced the company's fourth cloud region in the country, to be set up in Hyderabad. It joins existing regions in Pune, Chennai and Mumbai, giving the company what he described as the largest hyperscale cloud footprint in India.
Chandok said the Hyderabad facility would serve as a strategic hub for Asia and the Global South and rank among Microsoft's largest investments in the country by compute capacity. The region will have three availability zones and will be built to handle AI workloads from day one, he added. He also said the new India South Central cloud region will use effectively zero water for cooling and that the company is "putting water back into the ground."