India will be one of our top five markets within three years: NTT Data's Abhijit Dubey

The CEO of NTT Data Inc, talks about investing in India's AI infrastructure, agentic AI and the significance of long-term perspectives

By Naini Thaker Forbes India Staff

Published: Mar 18, 2025 05:13:56 PM IST

Updated: Mar 18, 2025 06:06:23 PM IST

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Abhijit Dubey, CEO, NTT Data

On Monday, Tokyo-based global digital business and technology provider NTT Data, announced a series of strategic initiatives for the Indian market. It included the launch of the Malaysia, India, Singapore Transit (MIST) submarine cable system, set to be operational by June 2025. The 8,100-km MIST system will have a data capacity exceeding 200 terabits per second (Tbps). As one of the largest submarine cables in Asia, it will establish critical connectivity between Malaysia, India, Singapore, and Thailand.

NTT has expanded in India for over a decade and recently launched its largest data centre campus, capable of over 500 MW, in Navi Mumbai. As the world's third-largest data centre provider, it is increasing global capacity from 1,500 MW to 2,000 MW, with 400 MW growth planned in India. Globally, NTT has deployed 200 MW of AI load.

“India is key in our global strategy, fuelled by its rapid economic and digital expansion. We’re proud to say that NTT Data has powered the IT infrastructure in India and globally, notably in data centre capacity. Currently, India is one of our top 10 revenue-generating markets,” said Akira Shimada, president and CEO, NTT, in a press release. “We are investing 8 trillion yen [$59 billion] globally over 5 years from FY2023 to FY2027 into growth areas, including data centres and AI. We are committed to delivering our integrated full-stack proposition to our clients across data centres, network, applications, BPaaS, managed services, cloud, security, and AI solutions.”

The company has invested close to $3 billion in India’s digital infrastructure over the last decade. “We remain committed to expanding our presence and strategic investments in the country that will elevate India to one of our top five markets within the next three years,” says Abhijit Dubey, CEO, NTT Data. Over the years the company has grown through acquisitions, and has 3,000 clients in India. The $30 billion giant is hoping to drive transformation across key industries such as banking, manufacturing and automotive in India.

In an interview to Forbes India, Dubey talks about the recent announcements, agentic AI, return on investment from artificial intelligence (AI), and more. Edited excerpts:

Q. Why is there a need to invest heavily in infrastructure in India?

We've had subsea, or submarine, cable infrastructure from Japan to the rest of the world for a while, and we continue to invest in it because that's the backbone of the global digital economy, and increasingly of the AI economy. So having Southeast Asia and especially India, which is geopolitically and macro economically super important, is critical. We've had this in the planning for a long time.

Beyond that, we've always been part of the digital AI infrastructure in India, especially from a data centre standpoint. Since 2011, we've invested over $3 billion in that space. Now, we also have marine cables coming into India, which opens up the country to the rest of the world from a connectivity standpoint. The two together can power the digital and AI infrastructure for the country.

Q. How does the Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN) technology enhance data centre interconnectivity, and what are its long-term implications for businesses?

IOWN is photonics [it uses light, often through materials like optical fibres or lasers and travels much faster than electricity] instead of electronics, both in the network and computing space. India is one of the first commercial deployments of this cutting-edge technology that we've developed as NTT Group. Right now it's interconnecting our three data centre campuses within Mumbai, but eventually we will connect all of our data centres with this advanced photonics network [APN].

Once we have that, along with the subsea cable coming into Mumbai and Chennai, we would have created a very high bandwidth, low latency and lower power consumption data centre and network footprint that can enable AI workloads to be hosted.

Q. NTT Data announced it is upgrading and expanding its Innovation Centre in Bengaluru. How does this align with the company’s global AI strategy? What kind of R&D are you looking to do in India?

Providing AI infrastructure is one thing. And helping enterprise clients transform using AI, whether it's their business processes or launching new products and services or becoming more efficient in their operations, is another thing.

With the Innovation Centre, we’re now looking at massive expansion, both in terms of capacity and capabilities, and to focus on three domains: AI, quantum and digital twin. The India Innovation Centre is part of our global network of innovation centres in 11 countries. The R&D that happens here is going to focus on global clients, not just Indian clients. India is already our delivery and innovation hub for global clients; this is just a reiteration of the commitment.

Q. Banking, manufacturing and automotive are focus areas for NTT in India. Are there other industries where you see growth potential?

There's an interesting segment, which is all the startups. India has third largest startup ecosystem in the world. So, we're addressing them from an AI infrastructure standpoint, but the opportunity to address them from other solutions and service offerings is one of the things we're looking at.

Also read: AI can turbocharge Digital Public Infrastructure and unleash benefits at scale: Nandan Nilekani

Q. Can you elaborate on the role of agentic AI in driving innovation at NTT Data?

Agentics is probably the most promising AI technology we've seen. If 2024 was about generative AI, 2025 is the inflection point in agentics. Every enterprise has an ecosystem of applications, and each application has its own captive data. Our view is that if you look at typical enterprises, you will most likely end up deploying a system of agents that span an ecosystem of applications and data.

We are expecting agentic AI to unlock a lot of productivity and we’re investing a lot behind it. A couple of weeks ago, we announced our own smart AI agent. You can go into any industry, let's say banking or insurance or manufacturing, and look at specific processes and ask, how do we completely reimagine these processes to be zero operations, that are completely driven by agents?

Q. Will this change the way workforces are hired?

Absolutely. We need deep technical expertise coupled with deep domain expertise, in that specific industry, in that particular process. This is easier said than done.

This will be a problem globally, because we are not going to be able to hire our way out of this demand curve; you're not going to be able to hire fast enough. We have to re-skill and up-skill our people. There's no doubt about that, and that's what we're investing in.

Q. How does NTT Data measure return on investment [ROI], both financially and in terms of long-term strategic value?

Every technology revolution has a characteristic associated with it: The adoption and impact are massively overstated in the short term and massively understated in the long term. In the world of AI, it's 2X the overstatement in the short term, and at least 2X understatement, if not 10X. That's one difference.

The second big difference is there is a cycle time between this overstatement in the short term and the understatement in the long term. If you look at cloud, etc, that cycle time was, let's say, about seven years. In the AI cycle, that cycle time is going to be significantly compressed. So, if you take that worldview, which we do, then you don't worry about the short-term ROI. You just worry about making sure you're doing the right things, both for yourself as a company internally, as well as for your clients.

Being of Japanese heritage really helps us, because we take a longer term perspective, with everything we do.

Q. Quantum computing is being predicted as the next big thing after AI. Would you say it’s a similar approach in terms of ROI?

It's a little bit too early to tell. It definitely has the potential to significantly amplify the capacity and scale of AI.

Q. What role does India play in NTT Data's global strategy, and how do you envision its growth trajectory in the next five years?

It is going to be one of our fastest growing markets. India is in the top 10 revenue-generating countries for us in the world today, and it'll be in the top five in the next few years.