Amazon AI Investment to Benefit India Small Biz

New Delhi, Dec 5 (PTI) Big tech firm Amazon expects its planned investment of USD 12.7 billion in building local cloud and AI infrastructure to benefit 15 million small businesses in India by 2030, a senior company official said on Friday.

The company has set a target to train 4 million government-school students in the next five years, Amazon's SVP for Emerging Markets, Amit Agarwal, said on social platform X.

"Our long-term goal is aligned with the Government of India's AI Mission, and we are aiming to bring the power of AI to millions of small businesses, customers and students. This includes empowering over 15 million small businesses and providing AI literacy to 4 million government-school students by 2030," he said.

Since 2017, Amazon Web Services has claimed that it has trained over 6.2 million individuals in India with cloud skills through several programmes, such as AWS Skill Builder, AWS Educate, AWS re/Start, and recently announced new AI courses.

In May 2023, Amazon announced plans to invest USD 12.7 billion in India by 2030 into its local cloud and AI infrastructure across Telangana and Maharashtra. The company has already invested USD 3.7 billion between 2016 and 22 in India.

"Amazon has already committed to invest USD 12.7 billion in local cloud and AI infrastructure through Amazon Web Services (AWS). For us, this is about more than innovation; it's about ensuring every Indian can benefit from this transformative technology," Agarwal said.

Elaborating on the training programme, the company, in a statement, said it plans to bring AI literacy and career awareness to 4 million government-school students by 2030 through an AI curriculum, hands-on experiments, career tours, and teacher training, which supports the National Education Policy 2020.