Amazon Web Services investment of $2.77 billion largest FDI for Telangana

The investment would position Telangana as one of the preferred destinations for other companies that are looking to set up data centres in future.

Cloud computing firm Amazon Web Services is setting up an AWS Region with three Availability Zones in Hyderabad, at an estimated capital investment of $2.77 billion, making it the largest foreign direct investment, Telangana has attracted.

“This investment from AWS is going to be the largest FDI the State has attracted since inception [in 2014] and will act as a strong anchor for attracting other technology investments,” Telangana Minister for IT and Industries K.T. Rama Rao said on the Amazon.com firm’s decision.

A release from the IT and Industries Departments said “The AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region is expected to start operations by mid-2022. The Availability Zones (AZs) consist of multiple data centres in separate distinct locations within a single region that are engineered to be operationally independent of one another with independent power, cooling, physical security, and connections via a low-latency network.”

AWS will establish data centers in three locations with an overall estimated capital investment of $2.77 billion (₹20,761 crore). The investment would position Telangana as one of the preferred destinations for other companies that are looking to set up data centres in future.

“Establishment of data centres like AWS is expected to support Telangana’s digital economy and IT sector in a multi-fold way. The new AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region will enable even more developers, startups, and enterprises as well as government, education, and non-profit organizations to run their applications and serve end-users from data centres located in India. Establishment of data centres in a region will increase the operations of sectors such as e-commerce, public sector, banking and financial services (BFSI), IT, and more,” the release said.

Mr. Rao, who had met the AWS leadership during his Davos visit earlier this year and subsequently to accelerate the closure of the investment, said: “AWS choosing Hyderabad as their preferred destination speaks volumes about the swiftness with which the government operates and also the transparency in the system. This investment further strengthens the existing relationship Telangana enjoys with Amazon. We, at Hyderabad, are already hosting the largest office campus of Amazon.”

The release said Telangana is one of the most progressive States with policies targeted specifically towards advancing the growth of IT and ITeS firms. “AWS chose Hyderabad because of the support provided by the government of Telangana, robust policy framework, and because it best met the rigorous requirements for an AWS Region.”

The new Region will join the existing nine AWS Regions and 26 AZs across Asia, in India, Australia, Greater China, Japan, Korea, and Singapore. Globally, AWS has 77 AZs across 24 infrastructure regions and plans to launch 15 more AZs and five more AWS regions in India, Indonesia, Japan, Spain and Switzerland.