India can become an AI infrastructure hub for Global South: Microsoft's Puneet Chandok

India has the demand, talent and digital foundations to become an artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure hub for Asia and the Global South, said Puneet Chandok, president, Microsoft India and South Asia, as the company expands its cloud and AI capacity in the country.

“I want India to become the hub for AI infrastructure, not just for Asia but for the Global South,” Chandok told ET AI during the Microsoft AI Infrastructure Summit.

On Monday, Microsoft launched the India South Central Cloud Region in Hyderabad, its fourth in the country, following the existing ones in Mumbai, Pune and Chennai. The company said the region forms part of its $20.5-billion India investment commitment.


The investment figure combines a $3-billion commitment announced in January 2025 and a further $17.5 billion announced in December 2025.

Beyond domestic demand

Chandok said the infrastructure being built in India would serve beyond the domestic demand, even as Indian businesses seek more computing capacity and greater control over data localisation.

“These data centres are global data centres. We have 80 regions in the world, so there is demand coming from the world we need to service,” he said.

Also read: Govt asks Microsoft to set up data centres closer to power generation sites

He pointed to the country's combination of market size, skilled workers and digital public infrastructure as the basis for its opportunity.

“We call it the India flywheel. India has massive market demand and real talent. It has the rails that we built for DPI and now we’re building for AI,” Chandok told ET AI.

Government programmes and the wider technology ecosystem were contributing to that momentum, he said, adding the next step was to make those elements work together faster.

Hyderabad's in the spotlight

Chandok described Hyderabad as Microsoft's largest infrastructure investment in India, but declined to disclose its capacity in megawatts.

“It is the largest infrastructure investment and the largest AI and compute infrastructure hyperscale presence in the country...We will continue to build on this. It will scale with time; it is not complete. There is a lot more we will keep building on this,” he said.

Microsoft said its data centre regions across India are now AI-enabled, with AI-capable hardware, high-efficiency cooling and the platform infrastructure needed for advanced AI workloads. Hyderabad has a three-zone architecture designed for expansion, with additional Azure and AI services planned, according to the company.

According to Microsoft, India South Central region operates on zero water cooling in line with Microsoft’s global commitments to become carbon negative, water positive and zero waste by 2030.

“The net water usage of the data centre is zero. We are not offsetting any future credits with water...The entire data centre is designed to be air-cooled. The five million litres we are putting back into the land are not meant to compensate for anything. They are intended to support the community,” he said.

The company said organisations will be able to deploy eligible sensitive workloads in India as supported services become available, using controls designed to support security, compliance and sovereignty requirements.

Adani Group, Bajaj Finserv, HDFC Bank and PB Pay have signed up for the Hyderabad region, Microsoft said. Chandok added some existing customers had started with data backup because having another region in a different seismic zone helped meet disaster-recovery and business-continuity requirements.

Also read: Microsoft in ‘action cycle’ on data centres, says India president Puneet Chandok

That was the initial use case, but more mission-critical, AI-first workloads will follow as capacity and services expand, he said. He also cited low latency, local data residency and the region's three availability zones as reasons for customers to use Hyderabad.

Asked about further expansion, Chandok said Microsoft was continuing to assess locations, although he did not give a timeline for a data centre in northern India.

“We are constantly looking for areas to build, given the demand in India, the Global South and Asia,” he said.

On AI development slowdown

Asked whether a slowdown in AI development could affect its investments, Chandok said the capacity being built also served Azure and cloud computing and cited double-digit Azure business growth over the past couple of years.

"We have had double-digit growth in our Azure business over the last couple of years. Copilot has seen massive growth, with five large companies reaching at least 100,000 Copilot users. We have seen significant growth in India, and that growth continues," Chandok said.

"We will continue to build. It is hard for me to comment on a hypothetical scenario... But I am confident in the growth and demand I am seeing, and in the capacity we are building.”