Alibaba Launches First Cloud Data Center In Mumbai

In a move to extend its cloud services to Indian enterprises, Jack Ma-led Alibaba Group has opened its first data centre in the country in Mumbai.

Paytm, which has emerged as Alibaba’s top bet in India, secured a total $877 million from Chinese e-tailer. Recently, Alibaba bought a controlling stake in TicketNew, which claims to be India’s second-largest online ticketing platform after BookMyShow and has a presence in over 300 cities. The Chinese giant also invested about $152 million in e-commerce player Snapdeal. Last week, the Competition Commission of India approved Alibaba Group’s acquisition of a stake in online grocer BigBasket, though the deal size is the subject of speculation.

The company, established in 2009, has partnered with Global Cloud Xchange (GCX), a subsidiary of Reliance Communications and Tata Communications. While GCX enables direct access to Alibaba Cloud Express Connect via GCX’s CLOUD X Fusion service, Tata Communications provides direct access to Alibaba Cloud Express Connect via its IZOTM Private Connect service.

Simon Hu, senior vice president of Alibaba Group and president of Alibaba Cloud said “Indian enterprises are innovative and operating in growth sectors, and we look forward to empowering them through our cloud computing and data technologies. As we build out the Alibaba Cloud network globally, India is another important piece that is now firmly in place. Services on Alibaba Cloud, including after-sales support, will be provided by a local team of professionals”.

However, despite being one of the largest cloud providers in Asia and having a local data centre, Alibaba may have a hard time pushing its cloud services in the country. This is because the Indian government and its agencies continued effort to ban Chinese apps and companies in order to localise customer data so that it is not handed out to Chinese spy agencies has painted all Chinese products and services in negative light.

Besides Alibaba, other multinational tech companies that offer cloud services in India include US-based e-commerce major Amazon.com Inc, which in July this year infused Rs 1,381.6 crore ($214.6 million) into its Indian data services arm, Amazon Data Services India. The data services arm is part of Amazon Web Services Inc, which leads in market share.