Given the current context around us, the one question that we are all asking ourselves is our reason for being. Why do we do what we do? Why am I here? What’s my purpose? How can I make things better?

For us here at AWS, our mission and purpose in India has never been more relevant - We empower Builders and Businesses to build a Better India. We do this in our communities, with customers, partners, and builders. In the days leading up to Independence Day, I asked my colleagues about what motivates them, and ‘how’ we can all come together and build a better India. The ideas and responses I heard were fascinating, and no two stories were the same. Synthesizing these ideas was hard, because how do you filter the finest examples when we literally work with hundreds and thousands of customers in India including Enterprises, Digital businesses, Start-ups, SMBs and Public Sector institutions. Think of it, AWS is helping reinvent virtually every industry in India with cloud as a foundation of agility and innovation. I am sharing below 8 ideas that resonated most with me on our 'why' in India.

We are building a better India by…

  1. Building trust with our customers, and ensuring that their customers trust us. More than 90% of saving accounts for one of India’s largest banks are now initiated on mobile devices. This means paperless and digital onboarding bringing in millions of new customers to banking for the first time. As one of my colleagues said “Banks are in the business of trust, and customers can trust banks, because they build on AWS”.
  2. Bridging the digital divide, ensuring small-and-medium businesses don’t get left behind in India’s digital transformation. I have always believed the 'S' in SMB stands for simple, and we need to simplify technology for Indian SMB's to digitize at scale. The ‘Amazon Digital Suite’ that we launched earlier this year is a set of easy to use software that provides solutions to real problems that Indian SMB’s face every day - reaching new customers, GST and compliance, powering finances through online payments.
  3. Helping unravel public-sector challenges. AWS and National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) together launched a Cloud Innovation Center (CIC) that provides an opportunity for nonprofits, education institutions, and government agencies to innovate and test new ideas with the technology expertise of AWS. The core mission here is to identify and deploy leading edge technologies to drive continuous innovation in delivering citizen services.
  4. Giving wings to young dreams. Some of the largest education start-ups in India are powered by AWS – these scaled literally overnight, making it possible for education and learning to continue without interruption. And we are on a mission to increase cloud literacy through our training and certification programs across the length and breadth of India.
  5. Bringing to India more entertainment choices. Enabling OTT availability all the way to the last mile along with customers, partners, and telecom providers, ensures the music, the cricket, the entertainment never stops.
  6. Empowering traders and investors to make accurate decisions. Online brokerage firms saw a five-fold growth in new accounts opened by women, and by customers from tier-II and tier-III towns across India. Millions have access to financial markets, because AWS provides scalable, secure platforms that are able to maintain performance during peak hours.
  7. Enabling Startups in their journey to solve problems in the most cost optimized and secure manner. We have programs like AWS Activate which helps bootstrapped startups experiment and innovate at a faster pace in the early stages.

  8. Building India’s best, diverse and inclusive Tech team. We were humbled to see AWS India being recognized as one of the 'Best places for women to work in India' in 2021 by Economic Times. We firmly believe that Technology should be built in a way that's inclusive, diverse, and equitable and are working hard to build the Diversity flywheel in India.

    ... And the list carries on and on. There is a lot of invention, innovation and ingenuity that we bring to our work every day. AWS is a force moving India forward.

I have never felt more proud of being an Amazonian, and it is an incredible privilege to be part of India’s digital transformation journey. At AWS, we are committed to empower customers and partners, deliver citizen impact at scale, re-invent technology experiences and build a better India.

It’s still Day 1 and we’ve only just begun.