The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) recently held a meeting with around 20 IT and e-commerce firms as well as industry associations to seek suggestions for attracting investments in data storage infrastructure.
Representatives from companies including Google, HCL, Infosys, Wipro, Amazon, Microsoft, Reliance, Google, Udaan and TCS reportedly participated in the meeting, along with officials from industry bodies such as NASSCOM, E-commerce Council of India, Informational Technology Industry Council, CII, ASSOCHAM and FICCI.
According to industry sources, the government wants to build India as a data hub and invite other countries to host their servers in India. Further, the government insisted on data localisation and asked companies to think about incentives to attract investment to the sector during the meeting. The meeting also focused on telecom-related issues such as connectivity and capacity expansion of data centres, and the Department of Telecommunications’ (DoT) regulations on setting up data centres.
In the meeting, the DPIIT asked Amazon, Microsoft and Wipro to compile challenges and possible solutions for data storage, and submit their views to the department within two weeks.
The meeting assumes significance as the DPIIT is working to release the national e-commerce policy by March 2020.
