Google Cloud to aggressively invest in India: CEO Thomas Kurian

New Delhi: After Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai committed $10 billion to drive India go digital, its Cloud arms CEO Thomas Kurian said on Thursday that they are not only committed to grow deeper in the India market but also aggressively invest to increase its Cloud footprint and empower enterprises in the country.

In the last couple of months, Google Cloud has won some key customers in India in the face of stiff competition from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, and Kurian is fully aware about the potential in the country as industries across the spectrum adjust to the new normal post Covid-19 pandemic.

"We have always been bullish on India and you will see more investment coming from us towards that direction. India offers a great opportunity where Google Cloud Platform (GCP) with its latest agile, secure and scalable offerings can help enterprises, SMBs and the growing startup ecosystem amid the government's call for digital transformation," Kurian told IANS during a press interaction during the 'Google Next 20: OnAir' digital event series.

Google would open its second GCP region in India, in Delhi next year. Google launched the Mumbai region in 2017. The new cloud region will expand Google's existing network, which stands at eight regions in the Asia Pacific, 24 regions and 73 availability zones globally.

Kurian said that the company continues to expand its global footprint, opening several new regions over the last year, with plans for many more and India is on his priority list.

"We have hired industry veteran Karan Bajwa to further drive the growth of GCP in the country. We have some great customers across the spectrum, like homegrown app Sharechat, ICICI Prudential, Cleartrip, L&T Finance, Ather Energy and the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), among others," Kurian informed.

The homegrown regional language social media platform ShareChat decided to migrate to Google Cloud in April this year. The migration from its incumbent Cloud platform to Google Cloud took place amid the Covid-19 crisis.

According to the market research firm Canalys, AWS enjoys 32.4 per cent of the global market share, Microsoft Azure 17.6 per cent and Google Cloud about 6 per cent.

Jefferies estimates that Google Cloud will have a 9 per cent market share in 2020.

Google Cloud revenue, which includes Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and G Suite, jumped to $8.9 billion in 2019, a nearly 53 per cent increase from the prior year and the GCP growth was "meaningfully higher," according to the company.

Kurian said the Cloud going forward is multi-cloud, that allows enterprises to train their staff on a single platform which allows them to use multiple clouds or environments of their choosing.

"Our mission at Google Cloud is to accelerate our customers' ability to digitally transform and reimagine their businesses through data-powered innovation. We continue to see organisations across various industries place their trust in Google Cloud because of the differentiated technology we provide to help them solve real business problems," Kurian noted.