INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) unveiled its fourth data centre in India on Monday, betting on rising digital consumption in one of its
fastest-growing markets, Reuters reported.Microsoft India head Anant Maheshwari said the company was making long-term investments in the
country, although he declined to confirm reports by local media of a $2 billion price tag for the latest centre.&A public cloud data center
is not a onetime investment, it is a continuous investment that we have,& Maheshwari told Reuters
&In the last two years, we doubled the capacity in the existing three data centers.&According to Reuters the overall Indian public cloud
services market is expected to reach $10.8 billion by 2025, according to research firm IDC.India&s government has been nudging foreign tech
companies to store more of their data locally, a move seen as New Delhi&s attempt to gain stricter oversight of Big Tech firms.Maheshwari
said Microsoft was continuing to grow its workforce in India from 18,000 currently &both through the pandemic and going forward.&&We already
serve more than 340,000 companies in the country,& Maheshwari said.The new data centre is located in India&s southern state of Telangana,
Reuters reported.The company&s business model, which relies on partners building additional services on top of its cloud platform, Azure,
generated business worth about $10 billion in the last five years, Maheshwari said.Competitors are joining the race in India
Key rival Amazon announced in late 2020 it would spend $2.8 billion to build its second data centre in the country, while Adani Group last
year announced plans to build six data centre parks across the country.The post Microsoft unveils fourth data center in India first appeared