Microsoft has inaugurated its fourth cloud data centre in Hyderabad, boosting local infrastructure for AI, high-performance computing, and regulated industry needs amid intensifying competition among hyperscale providers in India.
Microsoft has brought its fourth cloud region in India online in Hyderabad, adding fresh capacity as companies push more workloads, including artificial intelligence applications, onto cloud infrastructure.
The India South Central region, now generally available in Telangana, joins Microsoft’s existing sites in Pune, Chennai and Mumbai. The company also operates two data centres in India through its long-running partnership with Reliance Jio, which was first announced in 2019 as part of a broader effort to expand cloud access and digital services across the country.
Microsoft said the Hyderabad region has three Availability Zones, a design meant to improve continuity for critical systems by spreading operations across physically separate facilities with independent power, cooling and networking. The company said the layout was built to align with Indian regulatory requirements and seismic-zone standards. Early users and prospective customers include Adani Group, HDFC Bank, Bajaj Finance and PB Pay, all of which cited a mix of data residency, resilience, scale and support for cloud and AI workloads.
For regulated industries, the new region gives another domestic option for keeping sensitive systems close to home. Reserve Bank of India rules require payment-system data to be stored in India, while separate governance rules for regulated entities cover disaster recovery, business continuity, cloud services and recovery objectives for critical systems. HDFC Bank said it will use Hyderabad alongside Microsoft’s Central India region to strengthen disaster recovery and continuity planning, while also supporting AI work and high-performance computing. Atish Bhanushali, the bank’s head of cloud infrastructure, said the dedicated DR region would complement its existing footprint and improve cross-cloud resilience.
The launch also sharpens competition among hyperscale providers in India. AWS already runs regions in Mumbai and Hyderabad, while Google Cloud offers regional infrastructure and India-specific data controls through its Assured Workloads service. Microsoft has not disclosed latency gains for the new site, but proximity to users and local data location remain central selling points for cloud providers chasing enterprise and government demand in India.
The company is backing that push with major investment. Microsoft has said it has committed a combined $20.5 billion to its India operations through two programmes announced in 2025, including spending on cloud and AI infrastructure and skills development. It also says Azure revenue in India has grown by double digits in each of the past two years. IDC, in a forecast cited by Microsoft, expects India’s public-cloud services spending to reach $45.7 billion by 2030, growing at 22.2% a year, a sign of the scale of demand the company is trying to capture.
Microsoft has also framed the Hyderabad region as part of a wider shift in enterprise AI, where infrastructure needs extend beyond experimentation. Puneet Chandok, Microsoft India and South Asia president, said companies now need trusted infrastructure close to where data lives, teams work and decisions are made. He described Hyderabad as part of Microsoft’s broader cloud and AI commitment in India. The company said the site uses enhanced mechanical cooling with air-cooled chillers designed to consume no water for cooling, though that claim applies only to cooling rather than total facility water use.
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