NEW DELHI: Microsoft’s new India South Central cloud region in Hyderabad is among its largest infrastructure investments in Asia, the company’s India and South Asia president Puneet Chandok said, as it expands capacity for cloud and AI services.The facility is part of Microsoft’s $20.5 billion investment commitment across Asia. Chandok did not disclose how much of that would be spent on which particular business interests. He said the expansion must account for the resources data centres consume and what surrounding communities gain. “How do you learn to build a data centre? It’s by making sure that you’re net accretive to the community,” he told TOI, citing water, power and jobs.Chandok said advanced air cooling would eliminate water use for cooling at the new facilities. He also said Microsoft was replenishing water near its data centres and had committed to one gigawatt of green energy, of which 60 megawatts was already flowing. The company has not disclosed the new region’s total power demand, making it difficult to assess those commitments against its expected resource use.Microsoft is pairing the infrastructure push with AI training, Chandok said. He put the number of people trained at 10 million and said close to 125,000 had secured jobs. The company also has more than 17,000 engineers across 10 Indian cities, he said.Speaking at the launch, MeitY secretary S Krishnan urged Microsoft to expand its development and research operations in India alongside its data centres. He said global investment in AI infrastructure should help build domestic capabilities in areas including AI servers and semiconductors, while creating higher-quality jobs. Krishnan argued that future data centres should be located closer to electricity-generation centres, rather than concentrated around connectivity hubs.