Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella today announced cloud and AI led strategic partnerships with the Government of India and industry leaders from across key sectors of the Indian economy. This comes a day after Microsoft announced its plans to invest US $3 billion in cloud and AI infrastructure in India over the next two years, including the establishment of new data centers.
Read also – Microsoft announces US$3bn investment over two years in India cloud and AI infrastructure
The company aims to build a thriving AI ecosystem in India by supporting the government and industry in fostering AI innovation and enhancing productivity, efficiency and accessibility.
Read also – Woori Venture Partners Invests in Xnergy Autonomous Power Technologies
Puneet Chandok, president, Microsoft India and South Asia, said “The world is looking to India’s leadership in AI, and our partners like RailTel, Apollo Hospitals, Bajaj Finserv, Mahindra Group and upGrad, are helping the country move forward with AI. At Microsoft, we are humbled by the confidence that our customers from across sectors of the Indian economy are putting in Microsoft Copilot, our cloud and AI solutions. We are also excited to work closely with the government to extend the benefits of the India AI mission to every corner of the country and democratize access to technology and resources.”
Advancing AI in core Indian sectors
AI is increasingly becoming a key driver for business outcomes across industries. A recent IDC study, commissioned by Microsoft, showed AI usage in India jumped from 63% in 2023 to 72% in 2024. Most organizations in the country are now monetizing AI, with 79% using it for productivity and 66% for functional use cases, exceeding global averages.
To take the transformative potential of cloud and AI forward, Microsoft today announced strategic partnerships with five leading organizations across core sectors of the Indian economy. Through these partnerships, Microsoft aims to further unlock productivity and efficiency gains while delivering business impact using its cloud, Copilot and other AI solutions.
Transforming Public Sector with RailTel
Driving AI transformation in the public sector for population-scale impact, RailTel and Microsoft entered a five-year strategic partnership to advance digital, cloud, and AI transformation in the Indian railways and public sector space. Microsoft will support RailTel in establishing an AI Center of Excellence (CoE), making RailTel an AI-first organization and a leading systems integrator (SI) partner. The partnership includes an organization-wide skilling initiative to train RailTel employees in next-generation digital, cloud, and AI technologies through Microsoft’s AI National Skills Initiative and Enterprise Skilling Initiative. The two companies will co-develop AI solutions with Microsoft providing technical guidance on product roadmaps.
Transforming Healthcare with Apollo Hospitals
Leading healthcare provider Apollo Hospitals’ strategic partnership with Microsoft will span co-innovation, joint product development, go-to-market, digital transformation and research on topics such as disease progression, genomics and multi modal models to build world-class products and healthcare solutions. Microsoft will assist Apollo with their data strategy, engineering platform, and integrating AI to create new intellectual property (IP) that could be used in markets outside of India. Four healthcare copilots (for clinicians, patients, nurses, and hospital operations) have already been identified to support this engagement. The partnership is also expected to develop and implement an AI roadmap for the ‘Hospital of the Future’, focusing on expanding Apollo’s remote healthcare platform globally and co-innovating to create new health-tech solutions.
Transforming Financial Services with Bajaj Finserv
Building on their 15-year relationship, Bajaj Finance Limited (BFL), a part of Bajaj Finserv and India’s largest Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC), and Microsoft have entered a strategic partnership to enhance digital transformation aimed at delivering seamless, innovative, and secure experiences for Bajaj Finance’s diverse customer base. The partnership marks a significant milestone as Bajaj Finance transforms into a FinAI company, targeting a 200-million customer franchise. Bajaj Finance aims to leverage Microsoft Azure OpenAI services to achieve transformative outcomes, including increased conversion rates, back-office productivity, and front-line performance. The company is actively implementing AI use cases across workstreams, powered by Microsoft’s advanced AI technologies, with an expected annual cost saving of INR150 crore in FY26.
Transforming Automotive, Farm, and Financial Services with AI with Mahindra
Microsoft and Mahindra Group have joined forces to transform Automotive, Farm, and Financial Services with AI. The two companies plan to develop a range of AI projects that include agentic and multimodal scenarios for the Automotive division, chatbot solutions for the Farm & Tractors division, and multilingual capabilities for the Finance division.
To accelerate this AI-driven transformation, Mahindra Group has established a dedicated ‘AI Division’. This unit will serve as an innovation hub and incubation center for AI solutions across Mahindra’s various businesses, generating intellectual property (IP) for external deployment. Microsoft will support these initiatives by providing engineering expertise, industrial AI experience, and workforce upskilling. Furthermore, Mahindra’s ‘AI Division’ plans to develop and offer specialized pre-trained models on the Azure Marketplace, extending these solutions to a broader ecosystem.
Transforming EdTech with upGrad
India’s online skilling major upGrad and Microsoft have entered in a three-year partnership to drive AI innovation and unlock the potential of AI in the skilling and higher education sectors. This collaboration will enable upGrad to certify its learners in AI training programs in association with Microsoft. Committed to equipping 1 million Indian STEM learners, including early- to mid-career professionals, with foundational and advanced AI skills by 2025, this initiative is set to be a game-changer for the country’s digital economy. Leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Azure OpenAI Service (AOAIS), upGrad will enhance teaching and learning outcomes for millions of learners across India and South Asia. GitHub Copilot also empowers upGrad’s content developers, enabling them to create more efficient and impactful learning materials, saving over 6,500 hours annually and improving code quality by 85%. Together, these features reflect a shared commitment to delivering transformative learning experiences and building India’s AI workforce.
Strengthening India’s AI leadership
Microsoft has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with India AI, a division of Digital India Corporation, to collaborate on advancing AI and emerging technologies in India. Together, Microsoft and India AI aim to leverage AI to drive innovation, enhance productivity, and foster inclusive growth across the country. As part of the MOU, Microsoft and India AI together will:
- Skill 500,000 individuals, including students, educators, developers, government officials, and women entrepreneurs, by 2026.
- Establish an AI Center of Excellence, ‘AI Catalysts’, to promote rural AI innovation and support 100,000 AI innovators and developers through hackathons, community-building solutions, and an AI marketplace.
- Set up ‘AI Productivity Labs’ in 20 National Skill Training Institutes (NSTIs)/NIELIT centers in 10 states to impart foundational courses for 20,000 educators.
The collaboration will also focus on developing AI-enabled solutions for citizen-scale domains such as healthcare, education, accessibility, and agriculture by working with startups and social enterprises, advancing foundational models with Indic language support for India’s unique requirements, providing research collaboration opportunities through Microsoft Research (MSR) India. Microsoft’s Founders Hub program to support eligible AI startups with access to technology, business resources, and mentorship.
Satya made these announcements at the AI Tour in New Delhi. To learn more about the Microsoft AI Tour in New Delhi, Satya’s visit to India and how Microsoft is empowering organizations in India with AI, click here.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) creates platforms and tools powered by AI to deliver innovative solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers. The technology company is committed to making AI available broadly and doing so responsibly, with a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
