Rajya Sabha Q&A: India Builds AI-Ready Cloud Infrastructure; Capacity Projected to Grow 4-5x by 2030
SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure | SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals
Ministry of Electronics & IT | National Informatics Centre (NIC)
India is actively developing a secure, scalable, and AI-ready cloud infrastructure to support digital governance, facilitate private sector collaboration, and promote citizen empowerment. This push is driven by the country’s rapid digital transformation and the increasing adoption of AI-enabled applications across government, private, and social sectors.
Key initiatives and growth indicators:
MeghRaj (GI Cloud): A national cloud infrastructure has been established under the Digital India initiative to meet the cloud requirements of the Government of India. The GI Cloud, known as “MeghRaj,” provides secure, scalable, and elastic cloud facilities, featuring elasticity, pay-per-use metering, and self-service provisioning, specifically for delivering e-Governance services. As of December 2025, 2,170 ministries/Departments have hosted their cloud-based applications on MeghRaj.
Private Sector Collaboration: The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has empanelled the cloud services of twenty-six (26) private cloud service providers to support Central/State Ministries/Departments. These providers were empanelled after a successful audit by the Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) Directorate against international security standards (including ISO 27001, 27017, and 27018).
Data Centre Growth: The expansion of data centres is being propelled by digitalization and the rapid adoption of AI. Industry estimates indicate that cloud data centre capacity has reached approximately 1,280 MW. This capacity is estimated to grow by 4-5 times by 2030.
Major Foreign Investment: Global technology companies are making significant investments in India’s AI and data-center ecosystem. Google has announced a USD 15 billion AI Hub in Visakhapatnam (its largest investment in India), and Amazon Web Services (AWS) is setting up a USD 8.3 billion data center in Maharashtra.
Policy Relevance
The strategic emphasis on security, scalability, and AI-readiness, backed by international certification standards, directly supports India’s core digital governance policy goals. Furthermore, the massive projected growth, bolstered by nearly $23.3 billion in announced foreign investments by key global players, positions India as a major hub for AI and cloud computing, integrating technological advancement with the pursuit of the Digital India vision.
Relevant Question for Policy Stakeholders: How can the government ensure data sovereignty and prevent vendor lock-in for critical digital governance applications, given the overwhelming reliance on infrastructure and AI model development heavily funded and controlled by large global technology corporations?
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