DATA CENTRES TO BE MAJOR PILLAR OF INDIA'S GROWTH JOURNEY: VAISHNAW

Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw on Saturday highlighted India’s data centre boom, with $70 billion invested so far and expectations to reach $200 billion.

- CORRESPONDENT

This growth will create opportunities for startups, service providers, and AI innovation.

Speaking at a Qualcomm event to announce 2 nano-metre chip of the company, which has been developed in India, Vaishnaw said, “Data centres are going to be a major growth journey in the coming years. So far, we have committed 70 billion dollars in investments. If we add the other announcements, the total is about 90 billion dollars. I expect this number to exceed 200 billion dollars in the coming months... That will generate new opportunities for our service providers, young startups who can provide new solutions, and it’s going to create that strength which is needed in all 5 layers of the AI architecture, the AI stack.”

The focus is on strengthening India’s AI capabilities, with data centres enabling startups to develop and offer solutions globally. Vaishnaw emphasised the need for robust computing facilities to support this growth.

“We need strength in each one of them. Many of our startups will be very keen on having more computing facilities available in our country through these data centres so that they can use them for developing solutions and also providing the solutions to the world,” he added.

This comes after the announcement of the interim framework of the India-US trade agreement. India and the US announced a framework for an Interim Agreement regarding reciprocal and mutually beneficial trade.