Blackstone In Talks With Microsoft, Amazon To Build Data Centres In India

SUMMARY

Last week, AWS announced that it plans to invest about $12.7 Bn in the country by 2030

As of December 2022, the number of internet users in India aged above two, crossed 700 Mn

Online banking and digital payments grew by 43%, as per the same report

US-based alternative investment firm Blackstone is in talks with Microsoft and Amazon to build data centres for them in India to meet the growing storage and processing demand.

Recently, global tech giants including Microsoft and Google have shared plans of ramping up investments in cloud infrastructure in India. Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced, it plans to invest $12.7 Bn into cloud infrastructure in India by 2030 to meet growing customer demand.

The plans come at the time when India is catching attention from big global companies and investors, calling for better data management systems. In addition, the government is also drafting a cloud and data centre policy to bring the sector under regulation and security.

Reuters quoted Lumina CouldInfra’s global CEO Anil Reddy saying, “We will be one of those who are capturing some of those dollars from there because we will have them as a customer.”

According to him, the pandemic has created a data consumption shift in the country with people working remotely and an increase in social media, streaming platforms and ecommerce uses. He furthered that this caused a data explosion, nudging data investments into the country.

According to Nielsen’s India Internet Report 2023, over the last two years, the number of internet users aged two years and above reached over 700 Mn in India by December, 2022. The report further stated that internet users above the age of 12 years grew by 20% Y-o-Y basis to 595 Mn in the year 2022 out of which a significant chunk engages in video calling and watching.

Also, banking and digital payments grew by 43%, while digital news consumption stands at 20%. The report states that these areas may further grow in future.

Being a country with 1,425,775,850 people, and such immense use of the internet, India caught the limelight as a significant market for data business.

Further, Blackstone has been an active investor across different sectors in India. Last year, with investment from Blackstone, TPG Growth and ChrysCapital, logistics startup Xpressbees entered the unicorn club.

The investor also backed foodtech and cloud kitchen startup FreshMenu, last year, with a funding of $6.5 Mn.

Other than investing, Blackstone has also acquired majority stakes in the edtech startup Simplilearn for $250 Mn, in 2021.