The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is set to launch a pilot programme in 2025 that will offer local cloud data storage to financial companies at affordable rates, media reports said.
The planned cloud platform of the central bank will use local IT firms, reported Reuters citing sources in the know who wished to remain anonymous. This development will place the RBI in direct competition with other service providers like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, IBM Cloud, and Google Cloud.
This marks the first-of-its-kind initiative from a major central bank. The cloud services market is rapidly growing and was estimated at $8.3 billion in India in 2023. The market is expected to expand further to touch $24.2 billion by 2028, a report by International Data Corporation revealed.
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However, the segment remains largely dominated by foreign firms. “We want to start implementing on a smaller scale in the next few months,” the report noted citing a source who is working at a senior level in the project.
The report further said that the pilot level will be expanded in several phases in the next few years and this service is being built keeping in mind the requirements of smaller banking and financial services entities who find current offerings beyond their affordability.
Earlier last year in December, Governor Shaktikanta Das announced plans to launch a public cloud service for the financial industry. The project will initially be funded by the RBI’s asset development fund of Rs 229.74 billion, the report noted.
The report cited a source and said, “We have a humongous amount of interest (from private players who want to partner). A significant number of IT companies as well as Indian cloud services companies have expressed their interest.”
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