Microsoft India hikes prices of software and services by 11%

Microsoft has announced a huge price hike of up to 11% for its software and services in India due to currency fluctuations.  

“Due to currency fluctuations, Microsoft India is announcing Indian rupee pricelist changes to harmonise its prices for commercial on-premises software and online services between India and the Asian region, effective February 1, 2023,” the company said in its official blog.  

According to Microsoft, from February, Indian rupee prices for commercial on-premises software will increase by 4.5%, online services will increase by 9%, and Windows GGWA will increase by 11% to realign close to prevailing dollar pricing levels in the Asian region. 
The company confirmed that the revised Indian rupee prices for direct sales to India based customers for a select set of online services such as Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 will be reflected from February.   

“For business customers, these changes will not affect existing orders under licensing agreements for products that are subject to price protection,” Microsoft said, stating that the price rises bring charges in India "close to prevailing USD pricing levels in the Asian region."  

“Microsoft periodically assesses the impact of its local pricing for software products and online services to ensure there is reasonable alignment across regions and this change is an outcome of this assessment,” the company’s announcement states.  

“Customers across India buying online services in Indian rupee will continue to find Microsoft cloud offerings highly competitive,” the company said.  

The change in pricing does not cover Microsoft’s hardware products, such as Surface devices, or Office and Windows consumer products, the company said, adding that the price changes will also not affect resellers prices direct as they continue to be determined by resellers themselves. 

Microsoft’s competitors Google and Zoho, however, denied any changes in the pricing of their software and services in the India market.  

Microsoft, like its rivals, such as AWS, Google and Oracle, continues to face revenue slowdown in the wake of the pandemic, uncertain macroeconomic conditions, and geopolitical issues. The company recently reported its slowest growth in five years for the first quarter of its fiscal 2023 despite seeing revenue increase across business segments such as cloud, Dynamics 365 and Office 365.