New Delhi, September 21: Microsoft on Monday launched its India South Central Cloud Region in Hyderabad, its fourth cloud region in the country, as demand grows for infrastructure to support artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Puneet Chandok, president of Microsoft India and South Asia, announced the launch at the Microsoft AI Infrastructure Summit India. “Demand is not the issue. We need to get the supply,” Chandok said, stressing the need for more resilient and trusted infrastructure to support India’s growing AI adoption.
The Hyderabad region has three availability zones and is designed for AI workloads from the outset. It joins Microsoft’s existing cloud regions in Pune, Chennai and Mumbai. The launch is part of Microsoft’s previously announced $20.5-billion investment commitment in India. Adani Group, Bajaj Finserv, HDFC Bank and Paytm are among its customers driving demand for infrastructure, particularly in regulated sectors such as financial services and digital commerce.
Chandok said India generates 20% of the world’s data but accounts for only 3% of global data centre capacity, calling the gap a significant market opportunity. He added that 40% of Indian enterprises are scaling their AI use as organisations move from pilots to production. He said customers increasingly want their data, AI applications and processing to remain in India, along with greater control over how their data is used.
On sustainability, Chandok said the new infrastructure would use effectively zero water for cooling, while Microsoft plans to create 5 million litres of groundwater recharge capacity. These efforts are part of the company’s stated goal of becoming carbon negative, water positive and zero waste by 2030.
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