After meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New York recently, both Amazon and Google have announced that they will ramp up investments in India.
Amazon.com Inc said on Friday it will take its investments in India to $26 billion by 2030, adding $6.5 billion in new planned investments in an announcement made after CEO Andy Jassy met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the United States.
Though Jassy gave no breakdown, the announcement follows Amazon’s cloud computing unit Amazon Web Services (AWS) saying last month it will invest Rs. 1.06 trillion ($12.9 billion) in the country by the end of 2030, a Reuters report from New Delhi stated.
Earlier, Amazon had announced a $6.5 billion investment plan, largely to boost its e-commerce business where it competes with Walmart’s Flipkart and billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail. The new investment amount committed now comes to around an additional $6.5 billion.
The e-commerce giant’s announced investment during Modi’s trip adds to other companies, including U.S. semiconductor toolmaker Applied Materials and memory chip firm Micron Technology, which have made commitments during the Indian prime minister’s state visit.
Modi and Jassy spoke about supporting Indian startups, creating jobs, enabling exports, digitisation, and empowering individuals and small businesses to compete globally, an Amazon blog post said.
Separately, Google will open a global fintech operation center in GIFT City in India’s western state of Gujarat, with teams working on operations supporting its payment service GPay, and other product operations at Google, the company said in a statement to Reuters.
“We shared Google is investing $10 billion in the India digitisation fund, and we are continuing to invest through that,” CEO Sundar Pichai told reporters in a video shared on Twitter by Reuters partner ANI company.
On the final day of his Washington trip, Modi last week met with U.S. and Indian technology executives, including Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Pichai and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and appealed to global companies to “Make in India”.
Google has been operating in India since 2004, with offices in five key cities across the country with thousands of talented employees, a PTI report added.
In 2020, deepening its commitment to India and a reflection of its confidence in India’s growing role in the global technology arena, Google announced the Google for India Digitisation fund, a commitment to invest USD 10 billion (approximately Rs 75,000 crores) focussing on four areas.
First, enabling affordable access and information for every Indian in their own language. Second, building new services that are relevant to India’s unique needs. Third, empowering businesses as they embark on digital transformation. Fourth, leveraging technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for social good.