Microsoft launches fourth India cloud region in Hyderabad to meet AI demand

Microsoft launched its India South Central Cloud Region in Hyderabad on Monday, its fourth in the country, as businesses and government agencies seek more infrastructure to run artificial intelligence (AI) applications, Puneet Chandok, president, India and South Asia said at the Microsoft AI Infrastructure Summit India.

“Demand is not the issue. We need to get the supply,” Chandok said, arguing that India needs more resilient, trusted infrastructure to support the growing use of AI.

The Hyderabad region has three availability zones and is built for AI workloads from day one, adding to Microsoft’s existing cloud regions in Pune, Chennai and Mumbai, he said.


The latest launch is part of the company’s previously announced $20.5-billion India investment commitment.

Adani Group, Bajaj Finserv, HDFC Bank and Paytm are among Microsoft’s customers driving demand for infrastructure within the country, particularly in regulated sectors such as financial services and in digital commerce.

India generates 20% of the world’s data but accounts for only 3% of global data centre capacity, Chandok said, describing this gap as a market opportunity. He said Indian organisations were moving from pilots to production, with 40% of enterprises in the country scaling their use of AI.

According to him, customers want their data, AI applications and processing to remain in India, alongside assurances the infrastructure will be operated responsibly.

“AI creates value only if people can build with it in a trusted way,” he said.

Chandok said the infrastructure lets customers keep their data in India and control how it is used. Microsoft’s sovereign public and private cloud offerings give customers more control over their systems and data, he added.

“We do not train our foundation models on commercial customer data,” he said, describing the company’s principle as “your data, your control, your keys”.

On sustainability, Chandok said the new infrastructure would use effectively zero water for cooling and that Microsoft planned to create 5 million litres of groundwater recharge capacity.

These efforts support Microsoft’s commitment to becoming carbon negative, water positive and zero waste by 2030, claimed Chandok.