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Summary
Sashikumar Sreedharan, managing director of Google Cloud India, admitted that it still remains early days for India’s push to enforce sovereign cloud adoption at scale. As a result, Google’s own sovereign cloud offering has also remained limited in terms of its revenue contribution.
New Delhi: Six years after shifting its focus beyond consumer applications to enterprise deals, Big Tech giant Google’s cloud division in India is using its in-house artificial intelligence models and platforms to win long-term contracts with Indian businesses.
In an interview with Mint, Sashikumar Sreedharan, managing director of Google Cloud India, said the company is increasingly seeing businesses in the country agree to long-term cloud deals, as long as the propositions are led by how they can use Google’s Gemini suite of AI models and apps.
“India is a large, growing market where enterprises, especially small and medium businesses (SMBs), are continuing to digitize. They’re also seeking digital transformation deals where they get access to the latest AI tools that work on top of their own existing data. Add agentic AI capabilities to this, and we’re actively pursuing cloud deals where Gemini plays key roles,” Sreedharan said.
This, the executive added, is “true for both businesses that are already engaged with other cloud services, as well as completely new clients—India is a growing market, so there’s no shortage of business here.”
On 5 May, independent market research firm Synergy Group pegged Google Cloud as India’s third-largest cloud services provider with a 14% market share, behind Amazon Web Services (28%) and Microsoft Azure (21%).
Sreedharan, however, did not share how large Google’s India cloud deals are with businesses. “For the longest time, our cloud business was consumer-led. It has only been six years since we ventured into the enterprise space seriously. Of course, this means that the consumer business is still larger, but enterprise demand is growing fast and steadily.”
As per its latest financials on Tofler and Tracxn, Google Cloud India reported revenue of ₹2,070 crore in FY25. The company is yet to file its FY26 financials.
Sreedharan, incidentally, took over the top job at the Big Tech giant’s India cloud operations in July last year, after having been the managing director of Microsoft India until August 2023.
Interestingly, on 5 December, Microsoft South Asia president Puneet Chandok offered a similar picture for how the company was approaching cloud deals with businesses in India.
In an interview with Mint, Chandok had said that its enterprise clients, such as Apollo Healthcare and State Bank of India, were increasing their operations on Microsoft Azure driven by Copilot–the company’s equivalent of Google’s Gemini AI platform.
Google, however, believes its enterprise deals have a larger appeal, with Gemini being one of the world’s most prominent frontier AI platforms alongside OpenAI’s GPT and Anthropic’s Claude.
“It is only when you look at the benefits of automating tasks such as invoicing and other internal processes with agentic AI that you realize the sweeping, long-term benefits of cloud deals. We have both new-age startups and old SMBs keen on the cost benefits of automation, which is what is helping us win enterprise deals for our India cloud business at a fast pace,” Sreedharan said.
However, the executive admitted that it still remains early days for India’s push to enforce sovereign cloud adoption at scale. As a result, Google’s own sovereign cloud offering has also remained limited in terms of its revenue contribution.
“We have leading banks and other public sector users being keen on sovereign cloud platforms. But, it is still early days—policies such as the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, which mandate varying degrees of localization, are still being enforced. Once these become the norm, we’ll certainly see sovereign cloud demand from the public sector play up,” he added.
Sovereign cloud refers to cloud-based IT storage and processing platforms that are built, operated, and serviced in India, without being directly accessible from outside the country’s borders. With rising geopolitical tensions, sovereign cloud platforms are increasingly being adopted globally, though deployment remains at an early stage.
Industry analysts said the approach to crack long-term cloud deals by using AI as the key selling point is in line with how Indian businesses strike deals. “Google and Microsoft have bundled productivity and work suites of applications, where they are increasingly integrating AI. This makes them different from Amazon, which does not have a productivity suite—but uses its open approach of integrating any AI platform into its cloud as its selling point,” said Kashyap Kompella, veteran technology analyst and founder of consultancy firm, RPA2AI Research.
Kompella added that Google’s advantage in India would be a “reasonable base of its work application users, and these users would be difficult to break away for Google’s rivals.”
“That said, it is typically very difficult to break a long-term cloud deal for a client especially in India, and it remains to be seen if AI can or cannot convince enterprises to move long-standing relations,” he further said.
About the Author
Shouvik Das
Shouvik has been tracking the rise and shifts of India’s technology ecosystem for over a decade, across print, broadcast and web-first platforms. He's been a tinkerer of machines and PCs since childhood, a habit he was thrilled to convert into his profession. This has led him to fascinating experiences of technologies around the world, which is what keeps him hooked to his job.<br><br>Shouvik likes to believe that he is one of the few technology journalists in India who can also code. He has also been writing about the rise of AI well before it became a household name, and has met some of the most fascinating people over the years through his work.<br><br>Shouvik writes about AI, Big Tech, data centres, electronics, semiconductors, cybersecurity, gaming, cryptocurrencies, and consumer technologies. He is most fond of the stories he has written during his time here at Mint, for which he also writes 'Transformer', a weekly technology newsletter, and hosts 'Techcetra', a weekly technology podcast.<br><br>Outside of work, Shouvik spends most of his time with Pixel, whom he believes is the world's best dog. He is also an avid reader, a toy collector, a gamer and a frequent traveller.
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