Visakhapatnam, April 28 (IANS). Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu and Union Electronics and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnav on Tuesday laid the foundation stone of Google Cloud India AI Hub.
Google will invest about 15 billion dollars in this AI hub, which is the largest foreign direct investment (FDI) in the history of the country.
Speaking at the bhoomi pujan ceremony, Chandrababu Naidu urged Google and its partners in the project, AdaniConnex and Airtel Nextra, to complete and inaugurate the project by September 2028. Also, he assured all possible assistance from the state government for the early completion of the project.
He further said that this investment by Google is a game changer not only for Visakhapatnam but for the entire state.
He recalled that 30 years ago, when he had laid the foundation of establishing Cyberabad as an IT city, it has now become a hub of wealth creation.
The Chief Minister said that this will be the largest data center in Asia and Andhra Pradesh will emerge as an AI data gateway for the country.
He said, “Google, which started as a search engine, is now becoming the engine of India’s development. Although everyone searches on Google, but in this case Google searched and chose Andhra Pradesh.”
Naidu said that Visakhapatnam has all the qualities and described it as the most suitable location for this mega project. He assured that there is no shortage of water here and promised to bring water to the city from the Godavari river within 60 days.
He said the government will use the Google AI data center to increase its “speed of governance”, to which the government is committed.
Speaking in the address, Union Minister Vaishnav said that India as a country has missed many technological development cycles and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision is that India should play a leading role in the new technological development process.
He said India became a leader in IT services thanks to initiatives taken in the 1990s and early 2000s, but lagged behind in manufacturing of semiconductors, servers, laptops and mobile phones. However, the situation has completely changed in the last decade with the launch of Make in India initiative.
He said that from negligible electronic manufacturing today mobile phones have become the country’s most exported product, leaving behind even gems and jewellery, textiles and diesel.
Vaishnav said that the Prime Minister’s vision is to make India a major electronics manufacturing center of the world. He said, “In today’s world full of geopolitical uncertainties, the world is looking for a trusted partner where IT rights are protected and security concerns are taken care of. This is possible only in India.”
–IANS
abs/