AWS’ Vaishali Kasture to head Microsoft’s SMC biz in India

Former Amazon Web Services (AWS) India interim country head Vaishali Kasture is joining Microsoft as India and South Asia's SMC (small, medium and corporate) lead.

Kasture was the second top executive to depart from AWS to Microsoft last year, as the companies competed to get a larger share of the cloud business in India. Her predecessor at AWS, Puneet Chandok, took over as Microsoft India and South Asia head in September last year.

Read more: AWS loses second India head within months; Vaishali Kasture quits

On September 2, Chandok announced in an internal email, “I am delighted to welcome Vaishali Kasture as the SMC lead for India and South Asia. SMC is at the heart of India's digital transformation journey and Vaishali joins us at a pivotal moment as we build Al for everyone and copilot India & South Asia's Al transformation.” 

Chandok further said that Kasture brings a wealth of experience across Corporate and Investment Banking, Credit, Outsourcing and Technology, having recently led the AWS India Business where she set up the ISV (independent software vendors) segment, and led the Digital Native and Enterprise segments.

Kasture took to  LinkedIn to confirm the development. She wrote, "I cannot think of a better time to take up the role of GM for the SMC business in India and South Asia. At a time when corporates and SMBs are harnessing the power of technology for everything from Cloud to AI, data to security, enriching every workflow with Gen AI as the go-to tool for productivity uplift, Microsoft is singularly positioned as a full-service technology company focussing on end-to-end technology stack."

Kasture quoted the company's CEO Satya Nadella saying Microsoft is like the United Nations of Software. Helping people and organisations to do more, to achieve more. "And what better place to help execute this vision than India, the fastest growing large economy in the world with the second largest developer ecosystem and the deepest talent pool," she said.

Microsoft has been betting big on the Indian market with its cloud and AI bet. “India is uniquely positioned to make the promise of AI a reality,” Nadella said on his India visit in February this year. “We are committed to partnering broadly across the public and private sector to help close the nation’s AI skills gap and create new opportunities throughout the country.”

Amid a global downturn in cloud adoption throughout 2023, largely due to customers reducing technology spending in a challenging macroeconomic environment, India has emerged as a crucial market for cloud service providers. This is primarily due to the early stages of digitisation in the country, particularly among its numerous small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Not just Microsoft, global cloud majors such as AWS, Google, and also IBM are making substantial investments in the Indian market. Microsoft said it will invest $3.7 billion in Telangana to build data centres that will provide 660 megawatts of IT capacity. Amazon has announced plans to invest $12.7 billion in Cloud infrastructure in India by 2030. Google has already taken significant steps by investing $1 billion to improve its cloud services through the establishment of new data centres in India.

According to estimates from the technology research firm IDC, the overall public cloud services market in India is expected to reach $24.2 billion by 2028, as organisations increasingly acknowledge the transformative potential of cloud technology for their digital growth.