India Scales AI-Ready Government Cloud as MeghRaj Powers Digital Governance and Data Centre Growth

India is accelerating the build-out of a secure, scalable and AI-ready cloud infrastructure as demand for digital services grows across government, industry and citizen-facing platforms. At the centre of this effort is MeghRaj, the Government of India’s national cloud initiative, which has emerged as a foundational layer for e-governance, data sovereignty and AI-driven public services.

Launched under the Digital India programme, the Government Infrastructure Cloud—popularly known as GI Cloud (MeghRaj)—is designed to provide elastic, on-demand cloud services for central and state government departments. The platform enables faster application deployment, pay-per-use consumption, self-service provisioning and scalable computing resources, allowing ministries to modernise IT systems while maintaining control over sensitive data.

According to official data, more than 2,170 government ministries and departments have already migrated applications to MeghRaj. Cloud services are delivered primarily through the National Informatics Centre (NIC), which acts as the government’s in-house cloud service provider while also engaging private players through competitive tenders to meet growing capacity requirements.

To expand choice and resilience, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has empanelled 26 commercial cloud service providers to support central and state government workloads. These providers have been certified by the Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) Directorate against global security benchmarks, including ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018 and ISO 20000, ensuring compliance with international standards for data protection, cloud security and service management.

Security remains a key focus area. Government cloud services are hosted within National Data Centres, which employ layered security architectures, established operational practices and strict access controls to protect against cyber threats and data breaches. This approach aligns with India’s broader push to build trusted digital public infrastructure while supporting AI-enabled applications in governance, healthcare, education and financial services.

Data Centres and AI Drive Cloud Expansion

India’s cloud strategy is unfolding alongside rapid growth in domestic data centre capacity, driven by digitalisation and the increasing adoption of AI across both public and private sectors. Industry estimates suggest India’s cloud data centre capacity has reached around 1,280 megawatts, supporting critical sectors such as banking, power and public infrastructure. Capacity is expected to grow four to five times by 2030, reflecting rising demand for compute-intensive workloads.

Global technology companies are already committing large investments to India’s AI and data centre ecosystem. Google has announced plans for a $15 billion AI hub in Visakhapatnam, while Amazon Web Services is investing $8.3 billion to establish a data centre region in Maharashtra. These investments complement government initiatives like MeghRaj, reinforcing India’s position as a strategic hub for cloud and AI infrastructure.

As AI adoption accelerates and digital governance expands, MeghRaj is expected to play a central role in enabling secure, scalable and interoperable cloud services for the Indian government—supporting everything from citizen services to next-generation AI applications while maintaining sovereignty over public data.