Amazon, Google to expand India investments after Modi visit

Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google are committing to ramp up investments in India as the tech giants seek to spur growth in a key market.

The move follows a meeting held by US President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held with top technology executives, including of Amazon and Google, at the White House Friday.

Amazon announced it will invest an additional $15 billion in India by 2030. That includes plans by its AWS division to put $12.7 billion into cloud infrastructure in the South Asian nation to meet rising customer demand.

Google will open a global financial-technology center in Gujarat International Finance Tech-City, more commonly known as GIFT City in Modi’s home state, Alphabet Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai said.

“It’ll cement India’s fin-tech leadership,” he said, referring to Indian innovations such as Unified Payments Interface that allows people to use their smartphones as a tool for commerce, and Aadhaar. “We’re going to build on that foundation and take it globally,” Pichai said.

UPI is India’s state-backed peer-to-peer payments solution and several companies including Google use it to offer services in the country. Aadhaar is a biometric ID built by the state for citizens, which is used for payments and various other services.

Google will also bring its artificial intelligence chatbot Bard to more Indian languages, Pichai said.

Google has previously said it is developing an AI model that can handle more than 100 Indian languages across speech and text, a drive that would widen internet access beyond the country’s urban English-speaking minority.

“Google’s decision to establish its global fintech operations center in GIFT City is a testament to India’s growing prominence in the fintech landscape,” said Tapan Ray, chief executive officer of GIFT City, “We look forward to hosting Google”

India remains a high priority market for most big US internet firms such as Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon, Google and Twitter, but one where they’ve all had to face regulatory headaches.

A slew of economic deals were announced during Modi’s visit to the US, including Micron Technology Inc. to invest more than $800 million toward a $2.75 billion semiconductor assembly and testing facility in India. Bloomberg