India important market in AI strategy, supported with govt initiatives: NTT DATA official

Tokyo, Nov 25 (PTI) India is a very important market in our artificial intelligence strategy and is supported with a broader initiative, such as IndiaAI Mission, from the Indian government, a senior NTT DATA official has said.

Tokyo-based global IT services firm NTT, which is a leader in the data centre market in India, is proud of its early investments and acquisitions in the country, said Jan Wuppermann, Senior Vice President Service Assurance and Data & AI, APAC, NTT DATA.

The company holds nearly 30 per cent of the total market share in the data centre segment in India and expects to grow further in the near future.

"Within AI, we use India as a hub for AI talent and a global AI delivery centre, APAC centre of excellence, which is complementary to the delivery centre in India.

"India is a very important market in our AI strategy. It is also supported with a broader initiative in India around AI - the mission AI - from the government, which is an important one, with one of the selected parties on the infrastructure level," Wuppermann told PTI on the sidelines of NTT 2025 R&D Forum.

As an organisation, the challenge is always around getting the right talent.

"In India, there's always young talent. And then being able to train them up ...so that's really where we're focusing on," he said.

Elaborating on the current scenario of the Indian market, the company said it sees the country as a "very heated market", mainly due to a high degree of competition.

"We see a lot of startups, a lot of smaller boutique companies, almost doing work for free, which is (in a way) a little bit of educating the clients. They can have a safe guide into it," Wuppermann added.

India is a "price-sensitive market" in general, according to the company, and it has to prove its value in the market.

The company offers end-to-end services - from a strategy perspective to the delivery and the business process outsourcing, and then the full stack from the application development and maintenance to the infrastructure design and maintenance.

Talking about its competition in India, the global IT services and consulting company official mentioned that it sees "BCG, Accenture and Deloitte as the main competitors in the front end of the house - the strategy part".

On the company's ongoing development and plans ahead in the country, he said, "We are kind of following the natural Indian centres of gravity." Apart from its recent project announcement of AI data centre footprint expansion in Hyderabad, the company official also shared that it aims to expand in major cities including Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai, "not just in data centre infrastructure but also in the AI capabilities, consulting capabilities".

The company has already invested in financial, banking & insurance sectors as well as in consulting and business transformation, among others.

Further, Wuppermann said, "It will continue to invest in its second biggest vertical - broader manufacturing automotive bar - which is incredibly important in India. with a focus on its marketing capabilities, supply chain, resilience through AI, and even to the point of R&D and product development." The 2025 NTT R&D forum, held in Tokyo, Japan, by NTT Group companies from November 19-21 and November 25-26, 2025, displayed around 100 innovative projects to demonstrate its technological leadership in the fields of optical and quantum computing, artificial intelligence, digital security, mobility, infrastructure and more.

The theme of this year's forum is IOWN: Quantum Leap following the United Nations' designation of 2025 as the "International Year of Quantum Science and Technology", it said.

On November 18, NTT Inc signed an agreement with quantum computing development firm OptQC to collaborate on the realisation of scalable and reliable optical quantum computers.

The agreement will apply optical communications technologies developed by NTT under the IOWN Initiative with OptQC's world-first optical quantum computer that operates at room temperature and pressure. The two companies aim to create a 1-million qubit (quantum bit) optical quantum computer by 2030, according to a release. PTI SHW HVA