Reliance Jio, India’s largest telecom company, asked India to take urgent steps to localize data centers during the opening day of the eighth edition of the Indian Mobile Congress (IMC) 2024. “Indian data should remain in Indian data centers. Therefore, Indian companies that are ready to set up AI and machine learning data centers should receive all necessary incentives, including those for power consumption,” Akash Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Jio said in his address.
The four-day IMC tech event annually witnesses telecom majors, smartphone manufacturing giants, chip makers, and AI startups showcasing their latest tech innovations.
With India’s infrastructure growing at a rapid pace, there has been an increasing call from industry leaders to address data sovereignty challenges by ensuring the localization of critical data and creating a secure AI ecosystem in the expanding digital economy.
Ambani added that the country must establish a robust AI foundation, and Jio is committed to developing an ecosystem that helps democratize AI and provides affordable services to India.
Earlier this year, Akash Ambani shared his thoughts on AI during the 25th Annual CIO&Leader Conference. “We recognize the potential of AI applications such as natural language processing, computer vision, and machine learning in the Indian landscape. Our (Jio’s) focus on generative AI is about transforming the technology into practical, scalable applications. We plan to leverage generative AI to automate creative processes and personalize customer experiences, integrating these advancements into our Jio platforms,” he said during a fireside chat with CIO&Leader.
“Reflecting on our journey, we have been leveraging AI at Jio for a few years and are now prepared to share our best practices and learnings with our enterprise customers. In summary, it is crucial to allocate resources based on the strategic importance of each project, embrace change, carefully evaluate the business value, consider expected ROI, and assess implementation complexity.” he added.
Jio, which was initially soft-launched on December 27, 2015, for partners and employees, became publicly available on September 5, 2016. It has since proliferated to become India’s biggest mobile network operator and the third-largest globally, with over 482 million subscribers (as of October 2024).