Amazon raises investment in India to $26 billion by 2030

Amazon.com Inc said on Friday it will take its investments in India to $26 billion (AED 96 billion) by 2030, adding $6.5 billion (AED 23.9 billion) in new planned investments.

The announcement was made after CEO Andy Jassy met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the United States.

Though Jassy gave no breakdown, the announcement follows Amazon's cloud computing unit Amazon Web Services (AWS), saying last month it will invest 1.06 trillion rupees (AED 47.4 billion) in the country by the end of 2030.

Earlier, Amazon had announced a $6.5 billion (AED 23.9 billion) investment plan to boost its e-commerce business, where it competes with Walmart's Flipkart and billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Retail.

The new investment amount committed now comes to around an additional $6.5 billion (AED 23.9 billion).

The e-commerce giant's announced investment during Modi's trip adds to other companies, including US semiconductor toolmaker Applied Materials and memory chip firm Micron Technology, which have made commitments during the Indian prime minister's state visit.

Modi and Jassy spoke about supporting Indian startups, creating jobs, enabling exports, digitisation, and empowering individuals and small businesses to compete globally, an Amazon blog post said.

Separately, Google will open a global fintech operation center in GIFT City in India's western state of Gujarat, with teams working on operations supporting its payment service GPay, and other product operations at Google, the company said in a statement to Reuters.

"We shared Google is investing $10 billion (AED 36.7 billion) in the India digitisation fund, and we are continuing to invest through that," CEO Sundar Pichai told reporters in a video shared on Twitter by Reuters partner ANI company.

On the final day of his Washington trip, Modi met with US and Indian technology executives, including Apple's Tim Cook, Google's Pichai and Microsoft's Satya Nadella and appealed to global companies to "Make in India".