India is currently among the top 10 revenue-generating markets for NTT Data, but the company has ambitious plans to elevate the country to a top-five position, according to Abhijit Dubey, CEO of NTT Data.

This aspiration is driven by the company’s strong foundation in India and its focus on four key business pillars: digital infrastructure, IT services, delivery and innovation hubs, and payments.

NTT Data has invested over $3 billion in India since 2011 to build its digital infrastructure. This includes data centres and the company’s first submarine cables, which recently landed in Chennai and Mumbai. With AI and data localisation driving infrastructure demand, NTT Data has committed an additional $0.5 billion to enhance capacity, including 275 megawatts of new operational capacity across five markets.

The company is also exploring tier-II cities to capitalise on untapped growth opportunities in localised and sovereign cloud solutions.

Dubey also shared insights on the broader tech industry, expressing optimism for sustained growth. “We have already started seeing an uptick in the last six months,” he said, referring to the return of large-scale transformational deals and a gradual recovery in discretionary spending. While geopolitical uncertainties remain, Dubey emphasised a “general sense of optimism” about the future.

The CEO highlighted the United States as the largest and fastest-growing market, contributing over half of the industry’s projected growth in the next three years. The UK and Germany are also key contributors, though the latter faces political and economic challenges.

According to Dubey, emerging markets like the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa offer additional growth opportunities, with India playing a pivotal role due to its robust economic trajectory.

Below are the excerpts of the interview

Q: When I talk to tech company CEOs in Davos, the mood certainly seems to suggest that there is optimism, there’s confidence that this is likely to be a better year, that we’re probably even getting back to double digit industry growth rates. What’s the expectation that you have?

Dubey: I think it’s pretty similar. I would say we have already started seeing an uptick in the last six months. What we have seen, when the macroeconomic slowdown happened because of the interest rate environment is the discretionary spends just went away. But what we have seen over the last nine months is the largescale transformational deals are back in the market and the discretionary spend has started to come back. It is not at the level that we have been accustomed to in the past, but it is definitely coming back.

And while there are a lot of things uncertain from a geopolitical and other standpoint, there’s a general sense of optimism that things will be better.

Q: Which of the markets at this point in time are better poised or better positioned to your mind?

Dubey: The reality is, the US is always the largest market, but more importantly, it’s the highest growth market. That is something that is not sometimes understood very well. So, if you think about the growth over the next three years, more than half of that growth is going to come from the US. So, for all of us in the tech industry, US as an end market really, really matters. So, there is general sense of optimism that will be positive. And then beyond the US, the other two markets that are really big contributors tend to be UK and Germany.

Q: Germany is facing its own political as well as economic challenges today.

Dubey: Yes, so the jury is out on where they will be, but then there are pockets of growth in many other geographies. If you think about Middle East, it continues to grow strong. If you think about the post-election, Southeast Asia it continues to be strong and of course, India has been strong, and we think it will continue to be strong. We have a very strong starting point there. So, we’re pretty bullish on India as well.

And then, we’ve got businesses in Africa as well- in South Africa and Kenya, etc, and then Latin America. So, the good thing about us is, we are a lot more diversified than our industry is in terms of our mix.

Q: Let’s talk about India. Because you said you’re bullish on India, and it’s a strong starting point. So, what is the ambition? What’s the aspiration for India? What’s the plan?

Dubey: First of all, we’ve been in India for decades. The way I would characterise our India businesses is in sort of four different pillars. Number one, we are in the digital infrastructure business, so data centres, etc. And we have just landed our first submarine cable in Chennai and Mumbai. Our data centre business since 2011 we’ve invested $3 billion plus into India. So, we think with AI especially that profile is going to continue to grow, and we are planning to continue to invest in that space.

Q: How much more are you likely to invest, given the fact that, with the opportunity, but also with data localisation requirements, we are going to have to see more infrastructure being set up?

Dubey: Absolutely. We have already committed about $0.5 billion. So those are projects that are being worked on right now. So, we will see that capacity come online. We have about 300 megawatts of capacity already operational. There’s another 275 megawatts, that’s going to come online relatively quickly, and that’s across five different markets. And we continue to explore tier-II markets as well. So that part with AI and localisation, sovereign cloud, etc. we think there is tremendous growth potential.

On the IT services side, we obviously have been in India serving private sector and some public sector clients in India for many, many years. We’ve got about 3,000 plus clients actually in India. The private sector is actually professionalising pretty rapidly, and they don’t have legacy to deal with which means that they can leapfrog to the new technology paradigms much faster and in a much more agile way. So, we think that’s poised well.

Then we also have India as a delivery and innovation hub for all of our global clients. So, we’ve got about 30,000 colleagues who serve global clients from a delivery standpoint as well as innovation standpoint. India is one of our Centres of Excellence as it comes to AI etc. And then lastly, we also have a payments business in India. So, we have got four different pillars to the business. India is definitely in the top 10 revenue generators for us and we have aspirations to be in top five pretty quickly.

Watch accompanying video for entire conversation.