Interview with AWS CEO about $12.7 billion investment in India, the ChatGPT issue, and how cloud technology would support the objective of a $5 trillion economy

Adam Selipsky, the recently recruited chief executive officer of Amazon Web Services (AWS), the $80 billion cloud computing division of online retail giant Amazon, described India as a "extremely energetic, high growth market." He told ET that the Seattle corporation will invest roughly $12.7 billion over the next ten years to grow its business in India, citing the country's "tremendous" economic growth over the preceding ten years.

AWS is now observing "real appetite and potential for India-based organisations" to establish these applications in other parts of the world, according to the 56-year-old who took charge of AWS in March 2021 after Andy Jassy succeeded Jeff Bezos as the CEO and president of Amazon. AWS hosts two of the largest digital public infrastructures (DPI) to be built out of India – document storage network DigiLocker and vaccination platform Cowin.

In the midst of unprecedented global uncertainty, where firms are increasingly adopting a cautious stance, Selipsky claims that India is still a "bright spot." He told ETtech in a virtual interview that there is enormous room for both Indian enterprises and the government to use cloud computing more widely. Selipsky noted the growing popularity of local digital data storage and referred to AWS's plans to compete with Google's Bard and Microsoft's ChatGPT with its own generative AI platform.

Between 2016 and 2022, we have already invested $3.7 billion in India. Much of that was located in Mumbai, our first significant infrastructure area. By 2030, we now intend to invest an additional $12.7 billion in our Indian local cloud infrastructure. Hence, the total is $16.4 billion, and we are delighted and enthusiastic about it. By 2030, it will increase India's GDP by approximately $23 billion. That's a significant amount, and we're quite happy. The majority of that investment will go towards expanding the 2016-launched Mumbai infrastructure region as well as our brand-new infrastructure region in Hyderabad, which we introduced last year.

India has unquestionably remained a market with significant growth and tremendous energy. In India, digital innovation is moving quite quickly, as we can see. The level of activity I witnessed there really absolutely astounded me (in April). For India's economy, I believe these are exciting times. I am aware that the government was involved in starting several of those processes. By 2025, they hope to have built a $1 trillion digital economy, which will eventually grow to $5 trillion. And adopting cloud technology is essential if India wants to achieve these goals.