Amidst layoffs, Amazon web services, the software arm of ecommerce giant Amazon Inc, has launched its second infrastructure region in the Asia Pacific in Hyderabad. The Hyderabad region will give developers, start-ups, entrepreneurs, enterprises, government organizations, and non-profit organizations, more options for running their applications and serving end users from data centers located in India, the company said in a statement.
Through the new AWS Asia Pacific region, the company is planning to invest an estimated $4.4 billion in India. The investment will include capital expenditures on the construction of data centers, operational expenses related to ongoing utilities and facility costs and purchases of goods and services from regional businesses.
The investment is also estimated to support an average of more than 48,000 full-time jobs annually at external businesses, which will be part of the AWS supply chain in India, including construction, facility maintenance, engineering, telecommunications, and jobs within the country’s broader economy.
Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice president of AWS infrastructure services said, “The launch of the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region supports India’s digital transformation and is part of our long-term investment in the country since opening our first office in 2011. Customers and partners in India will now have the additional regional infrastructure to deploy applications with greater resilience, availability, and even lower latency.”
“We are proud to invest in the future of the Indian technology community and workforce, and we are committed to helping organizations across industries increase agility and drive innovation,” he added.
The AWS region will add an estimated $7.6 billion or ₹63,600 crore to India’s gross domestic product by 2030. AWS opened its first infrastructure region in Asia-Pacific region in 2016. With the launch of the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region, AWS now has 96 Availability Zones across 30 geographic regions, with announced plans to launch 15 more Availability Zones and five more AWS Regions in Australia, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, and Thailand, according to the company.
Rajeev Chandrashekhar, the union minister of state for electronics and information technology said that AWS investment in India will help catalyse the domestic digital economy. “As a part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s $1 trillion digital economy vision, the ‘India cloud’ is set for big expansion and innovation. Data centers are an important element of the digital ecosystem. AWS’s investment in expanding their data centers in India is a welcome development that would help catalyze India’s digital economy,” Chandrandrashekhar said.
Notably, the development comes at the heels of the e-commerce giant announcing mass layoffs across its Alexa and cloud gaming divisions. According to the reports, the online retailer is planning to slash 10,000 jobs or 3% of its corporate workforce or less than 1% of its global workforce. This is touted to be the largest layoff in the e-commerce giant’s corporate history. Moreover, the company is planning to lay off hundreds of employees in its India team, which has 10,000 employees. India is amongst the most lucrative markets of the e-commerce giant with more than 100 million users.