Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Amazon deepens ties with Telangana

By Y V Phani Raj

Published: Updated On - 12:19 AM, Sat - 7 November 20

AWS’ Rs 20,761 cr investment is in line with its confidence on State government’s business-friendly policies

Hyderabad: Amazon India has been aggressively investing in Telangana across its verticals. Amazon Web Services, an Amazon.com company, which announced its Rs 20,761 crore ($2.77 billion) investment on Friday to create multiple data centres in Hyderabad, is in line with its continued investment philosophy and belief in the prospects of the State and the confidence on the State government’s business-friendly policies.

In September this year, Amazon India expanded its fulfilment infrastructure in Telangana with two new fulfilment centres (FCs) in Hyderabad. With this infrastructure, Amazon.in now offers storage capacity of more than 4.5 million cubic feet spread across four fulfilment centres to its more than 23,000 sellers in Telangana. Amazon operates its largest fulfilment centre in the country located in Hyderabad.

In August 2019, Amazon inaugurated its largest campus globally in Hyderabad. Spread over 9.5 acres, the campus is built to support more than 15,000 employees and reaffirms Amazon’s commitment to Telangana.

Sharing the plans for AWS in the State, Puneet Chandok, president-Commercial Business, Amazon Internet Services, AWS India and South Asia said, “We will be opening the second AWS infrastructure region in India in Hyderabad. The Region will be available by mid-2022. This will help businesses across the scale—startups, SMEs, enterprises and government agencies. The zones are physically isolated to ensure high-levels of security. The Availability Zones in Hyderabad will address long-term capacity needs of the growth market like India for us.”

“We are seeing growth in digital business and will evaluate setting up further Availability Zones in Hyderabad as need arises in the future,” added Chandok.

Rahul Sharma, president, Public Sector, Amazon Internet Services, AWS India and South Asia said AWS has closely worked with the Telangana government to come out with over 100 dashboards to help the State take decisions on Covid-induced lockdown across districts, keeping in view aspects such as vulnerability due to the pandemic and the steps needed to boost economy in each of the districts across the State.

AWS is also working with startups in Telangana that are in Artificial Intelligence (AI) space following Telangana government’s call to make 2020 the year of AI.

“Amazon and Telangana have partnered on several initiatives since the commencement of our operations in India with our largest fulfilment centre in the country located in Hyderabad. This network expansion will help create thousands of work opportunities and will further help us support small and medium businesses in the region to fulfil their customer orders seamlessly,” said Prakash Kumar Dutta, director, Fulfilment Centres & Supply Chain, Amazon India, recently.

Building long-term ties

Over the past five years, TS government and Amazon have had a very fruitful association. Progressive policies of Telangana under the leadership of K Chandrashekhar Rao and IT Minister KT Rama Rao have made the State a favourite destination for many marquee companies.