French OVH expands to India amid rising cloud adoption

Olivier Sorgo

(Reuters) – French software company OVHcloud has launched its first data center in India as it expands in Asia-Pacific to capitalize on rising cloud adoption amid heightened concerns over data privacy, it said on Monday .

The new data center in Mumbai will provide Indian businesses with on-premises computing and storage infrastructure to meet changing data compliance needs as India digitizes and seeks greater data protection, OVH said.

International Data Corporation (IDC), a market research firm specializing in the technology sector, forecast in December that the Indian public cloud services market will reach $13.0 billion by 2026, with a compound annual growth rate of 23.1% from 2021 to 2026.

“The Indian market is a very… fast growing market,” CEO Michel Paulin told Reuters, adding that OVH has already sold several hundred servers.

OVH’s strategy is to open 15 new locations around the world by 2024, including in Sydney and Singapore. Paulin said his highly indebted lending capacity and additional €200 million funding from the European Investment Bank meant he could fund growth over the next four years.

The company already has more than 30 data centers around the world and employs more than 2,200 people.

“We will continue to recruit in India,” Paulin said, adding that OVH created jobs in Mumbai last year to prepare for the launch and implementation of the technical infrastructure.

Inflation and the aftermath of the war in Ukraine have led to the layoffs or termination of employment of many European companies. But the need for digital and cloud solutions still exists, Paulin said.

“At present, most public institutions understand that it is very important … to address these issues of data sovereignty,” Paulin said, adding that OVH is in intensive dialogue with the European Commission and the French government on these issues.

On Thursday, the UK announced plans to ban Chinese TikTok from state-owned corporate devices, following similar announcements from the US and the European Union.

(Reporting by Olivier Sorgo, edited by Ed Osmond)