Centre Plans A New Scheme To Help Indian Companies Design Localised Cloud Solutions

In a bid to challenge the duopoly of Google and Amazon in the cloud solutions market, the Centre is reportedly working on a scheme that will incentivise Indian companies, especially micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), to come out with new solutions. 

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is working on a design-linked incentive (DLI) scheme for this, the Economic Times reported.

The government is looking at providing incentives to companies that come out with solutions that can operate with only 50 or fewer racks. “Can there be a shared-cost structure that can be looked at? These are some of the ideas out there which can be covered under this DLI,” the report quoted an official as saying.

While the IT ministry already has an initiative called Meghraj to promote cloud adoption across several sectors, with the new scheme, the Centre is looking at promoting Indian companies which can provide localised solutions. 

With increasing digitisation, the demand for cloud services is on the rise in the country. Amid this, the government, last year, announced plans to develop a National Government Cloud.

Earlier this year, Amazon Web Services India said it would invest $12.7 Bn in India by 2030 to upgrade and scale up its cloud infrastructure. 

Last year, cloud storage startup Lucidity also bagged $5.3 Mn in a seed funding round to not only fuel growth in the country but also abroad. 

Last year, fintech giant PhonePe also said it would invest $200 Mn to build data centres in the country. Meanwhile, conglomerates like the Adani Group and Hiranandani Group have also entered the data centre space.

The development comes at a time when the Centre is tightening the screws on big tech companies, including Amazon and Google, for various violations. While the Competition Commision of India slapped two fines totalling over INR 2,200 Cr on Google last year, Amazon has also been under the lens for violating norms.

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