Airtel, Google Cloud partner to provide cloud and Gen AI solutions to Indian enterprises

India's second-largest service provider, Bharti Airtel, has teamed up with Google Cloud to provide cloud solutions to the country's enterprises. The collaboration will allow Airtel to offer a range of cloud-managed services to its existing base of over 2,000 large enterprises and a million medium and small businesses.

As part of the partnership, Airtel will use Google Cloud's generative AI (GenAI) capabilities to improve its customer experience and enhance the efficiency of its internal processes. The two companies will also work on a joint go-to-market strategy for cloud solutions.

"As India accelerates its digital transformation, cutting-edge cloud and AI solutions will be at the heart and center of this change. We are happy to partner with Google Cloud and jointly address this market opportunity with secure and scalable Cloud solutions for government, enterprises, and emerging businesses," said Gopal Vittal, Bharti Airtel's managing director and CEO.

"Through this partnership, we aim to explore and build transformative solutions that can enhance Airtel's customer experiences," said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud.

The two companies will develop AI and ML solutions that will be trained on Airtel's large data set. "These solutions include geospatial analytics solutions with location intelligence for trend-spotting, predictive capabilities, market assessment, site selection, risk management, and asset tracking; voice analytics solutions for conversational applications trained across languages; and marketing technology solutions," says the press release.

Airtel has set up a managed services center in the city of Pune, where more than 300 experts are being trained on Google Cloud services. It has also developed an Internet of Things (IoT) solution for the utility sector that leverages Google Cloud AI services.

The Indian cloud market is growing exponentially as businesses are looking to migrate their IT infrastructure as part of their digital transformation. According to IDC, the Indian Public Cloud Services market is set to grow with a CAGR of 23.4% from 2022 to 2027. Indian enterprises are also trying to grow their investment in generative AI to optimize their operations and reduce their expenditure. 

Indian telcos are forming partnerships with global cloud providers, like Google Cloud, to offer enterprises cloud solutions. Reliance Jio, the country's biggest telco, has a partnership with Microsoft to offer Microsoft Azure services to Indian businesses.