Tata Communications, a cloud infrastructure provider, is making significant investments in artificial intelligence (AI) compute capacity as it advances its partnership with superchip maker Nvidia to construct an AI supercomputer. According to the company’s managing director and chief executive, AS Lakshminarayanan, the Tatas will participate in the Centre’s AI Mission to offer AI services to startups and researchers.
“We will offer infrastructure-as-a-service and the platform on top for customers to do the data pipeline, manage that properly, do the version management of the models, so that our customers can consume cloud capacity very easily at one of the best price performances and deliver AI at national scale,” he explained.
Lakshminarayanan emphasized the government’s enthusiasm for enabling startups in India, expressing Tata Communications’ commitment to being a significant contributor to this mission. On the business front, he anticipates that the acquired entities – Switch and Kaleyra – will become profitable this year.
“We have had good successes in the international market by combining the TataComm media capabilities and Switch capabilities. Last year we carried more than 80,000 live sporting events. One of the OTT players in the US carries all its live events through our production and broadcast platform,” Lakshminarayanan stated.
In May last year, Tata Communications’ Dutch arm acquired New York-based video production and distribution company The Switch Enterprises LLC for $58.8 million in an all-cash deal. Additionally, in June, it acquired communications platform Kaleyra for $100 million and assumed all its outstanding debt. Although these acquisitions have added margin pressure to the company’s profitability, the chief executive expects both businesses to turn profitable next year.
“We’re also winning deals for Kaleyra because it gives confidence to many customers in India and internationally that Kaleyra is now backed by a very reliable and trustworthy brand as TataComm,” he concluded.
