Bharti Airtel struck a long-term partnership with Google Cloud to provide cloud solutions and generative AI services to more than 1 million Indian enterprises, in a move aimed at accelerating digitalisation in the country.

Under the deal, Google Cloud and Airtel will offer their stack of cloud offerings to the operator’s customer base of more than 2,000 large enterprises and 1 million emerging businesses, the operator stated.

Using data the operator generates to train AI models, they plan to use AI services for businesses and will feature “geospatial analytics solutions” designed to identify market trends, track assets, and evaluate and predict risks, among other things.

It will also offer voice analytics solutions for multilingual conversational applications and marketing technology solutions.

The operator said it will also use Google Cloud’s AI services to “transform” its customer interactions across its mobile, broadband and digital TV offerings, as well as to boost the company’s internal operations. There is a plan for Airtel to expand these services to its B2B customers at home and abroad.

A facility in the city of Pune has been set up to train more than 300 specialists to aid with deployment of Google Cloud’s services and to develop more “world-class” solutions. Further, Airtel has developed an IoT solution for the utility sector which also devises tools by Google Cloud, but it did not provide details on this particular offering.

Airtel and Google Cloud’s partnership is intended to target India’s growing public cloud market, which IDC forecasts will reach $17.8 billion by 2027.

“As India accelerates its digital transformation, cutting-edge cloud and AI solutions will be at the heart and center of this change”, said MD and CEO at Airtel Gopal Vittal.

Vittal added the collaboration will “accelerate the deployment of genAI in the country and unlock its potential to solve problems”.