Puneet Chandok, the India and South Asia Head of retail behemoth Amazon's cloud division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), has resigned with effect from August 31, news agency Reuters reported on Friday. Chandok started heading Amazon Web Services in June 2019. Chandok will be replaced by Vaishali Kasture, who is the current Head of Enterprise for Mid-Market and Global Businesses at AWS India and South Asia. Kasture will, however, take on the role of an interim leader of commercial business for the unit.
Chandok’s departure comes as AWS, the Cloud arm of e-commerce giant Amazon, last month announced plans to invest Rs 1,05,600 crore ($12.7 billion) into cloud infrastructure in India by 2030 to meet growing customer demand for cloud services in the country.
This investment is estimated to contribute Rs 1,94,700 crore ($23.3 billion) to India’s total gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030. The planned investment in data centre infrastructure in India will support an estimated average of 1,31,700 full-time equivalent jobs in Indian businesses each year, said the company.
Rajeev Chandrashekhar, the Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, stated that AWS' investment aligns with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Digital India vision, which has been instrumental in driving the growth of cloud and data centres in India. The minister welcomed AWS's investment and emphasized that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is actively working on a Cloud and Data Center Policy to foster innovation, sustainability, and growth in India's cloud industry.
AWS last year announced the launch of its second infrastructure region in the country in Hyderabad.
“The launch of the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region and our AWS Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Region will support this by enabling local customers with data residency preferences to store data securely in India while providing customers with even lower latency across the country,” Chandok was quoted as saying by IANS in 2022.
“We have also designed and delivered first-of-a-kind innovation to restrict access to customer data,” Chandok added.