Global technology giant Microsoft announced on Tuesday plans to invest $17.5 billion to help build India’s artificial intelligence infrastructure, with CEO Satya Nadella calling it “our largest investment ever in Asia”.Several global corporations have announced large investments this year in the South Asian nation, which is projected to have more than 900 million internet users by year’s end.”To support the country’s ambitions, Microsoft is committing US$17.5B (billion) — our largest investment ever in Asia — to help build the infrastructure, skills, and sovereign capabilities needed for India’s AI first future,” Nadella said in a post on X.Nadella made the announcement on social media after he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi, thanking the leader for “an inspiring conversation on India’s AI opportunity”.In a statement, Microsoft said the investment would be spread over four years.”Together, Microsoft and India are poised to set new benchmarks and drive the country’s leap from digital public infrastructure to AI public infrastructure in the coming decade,” the statement said.The tech giant said one of the key priorities of its investment plan was “building secure, sovereign-ready hyperscale infrastructure to enable AI adoption in India”.”At the heart of this effort is the significant progress being made at the India South Central cloud region, based in Hyderabad — that is set to go live in mid-2026,” Microsoft added.The planned cloud region is twice the size of the iconic Eden Gardens stadium in India’s eastern city Kolkata, which has a capacity of over 65,000 people. Microsoft said the latest announcement “builds on” a previous investment pledge Nadella had made earlier this year, committing $3 billion for AI and cloud infrastructure in India over the next two years.Modi said he was “happy” that the tech giant had chosen India as the destination for its largest investment in Asia.”The youth of India will harness this opportunity to innovate and leverage the power of AI for a better planet,” the prime minister said in a post on X. “When it comes to AI, the world is optimistic about India,” Modi added.- ‘Tremendous potential’ -Modi on Tuesday also met with the heads of tech firms Intel and Cognizant.Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said the company was “committed to support India’s semiconductor mission”.”We had a wide-ranging discussion on a variety of topics related to technology, computing and the tremendous potential for India,” Tan said in a post on X.Cognizant said its CEO Ravi Kumar S met with the prime minister “for an inspiring conversation on accelerating AI adoption and advancing education and skill development to enhance AI capabilities and productivity”.Global technology giants are aggressively courting more users in India, the world’s most populous country and fifth-largest economy.A special area of focus has been artificial intelligence with US startup Anthropic in October unveiling plans to open an office in India. Its chief executive Dario Amodei has also met Modi.The same month, Google said it will invest $15 billion in India over the next five years, as it announced a giant data centre and artificial intelligence base in the country.OpenAI has said it will open an India office, with its chief Sam Altman noting that ChatGPT usage in the country had grown fourfold over the past year.AI firm Perplexity also announced a major partnership in July with Indian telecom giant Airtel, offering the company’s 360 million customers a free one-year Perplexity Pro subscription.But India’s bid to become a global technology and artificial intelligence hub is colliding with increasingly tightening digital regulations.According to recent media reports, authorities are drafting plans to ensure that manufacturers enable satellite location tracking in smartphones that cannot be turned off by users — a proposal that rights groups have raised the alarm over.

India’s biggest airline IndiGo said Tuesday its operations had stabilise after it cancelled thousands of flights, triggering days of airport chaos last week.”Our on-time performance is… back to normal levels,” an IndiGo statement said, adding the airline was operating more than 1,800 flights on Tuesday, and planned to “fly nearly 1,900 flights” on Wednesday.But India’s civil aviation regulator told the company to cut its planned flights by 10 percent as it had “not demonstrated an ability to operate these schedules efficiently”.A previous order called for a five-percent reduction.Civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu said it was “necessary to curtail the overall IndiGo routes, which will help in stabilising the airline’s operations and lead to reduced cancellations”.Airports across India were thrown into disarray last week, with the private carrier admitting “misjudgement and planning gaps” in adapting to a new pilot rest policy which has since been suspended.The operational meltdown came even though IndiGo had two years to prepare for the the new rules, which came into effect last month with the aim of giving pilots more rest periods to enhance passenger safety.Naidu last week said the flight duty time limitations rules had “been placed in abeyance”.The minister told parliament on Tuesday that a “detailed enforcement investigation” into the disruption had begun.”No airline, however large, will be permitted to cause such hardship to passengers through planning failures, non-compliance or non-adherence to statutory provisions,” Naidu said.”Safety in civil aviation is completely non-negotiable.”The crisis is one of the biggest challenges faced by IndiGo, a no-frills airline which has built its reputation on punctuality.India is one of the world’s fastest growing aviation markets, hitting 500,000 daily flyers last month for the first time.