AI has potential to be great equaliser: Amazon India head

Bengaluru: Amazon on Thursday announced plans to bring AI to millions of Indians by 2030, supporting the Government of India's AI Mission to boost accessibility, productivity, and digital inclusion. The e-commerce giant has also committed to bringing AI literacy and career awareness to 4 million government-school students by 2030, and it will continue to leverage AI to make shopping easier and more immersive for hundreds of millions of customers on Amazon.in.

The company also announced that it is on track to invest $12.7 billion in local cloud and AI infrastructure and will bring the benefits of AI to over 15 million small businesses through its different businesses.

"AI has the potential to be the great equaliser in India — breaking down barriers of language, literacy, and access that have historically held people back," said Amazon India Country Manager Samir Kumar.

"When a small business owner in a tier-3 city can use AI to create professional product listings in minutes, or a student in a government school learns skills that open doors to new careers, or a customer shops in their local language without needing to type — that's when technology truly serves everyone. We're building AI infrastructure and tools at scale, because we believe every Indian deserves to benefit from this transformation, and we're proud to support the government's AI mission to make it a reality," Kumar added.

In May 2023, Amazon announced plans to invest $12.7 billion in India by 2030 into its local cloud and AI infrastructure across Telangana and Maharashtra. AWS has a number of customers in India leveraging its agentic AI capabilities across private and public sectors including DigiYatra, Apollo Tyres and Axis Bank. AWS’ focus on skilling is global, and the company is building a pipeline of skilled people ready for an agentic AI future. Since 2017, AWS has trained over 6.2 million individuals in India with cloud skills through several skilling programs, such as AWS Skill Builder, AWS Educate, AWS re/Start, and recently announced new AI courses.