Amazon Web Services (AWS) India has announced that the National Health Authority (NHA), Government e-Marketplace (GeM), and Public Sector Bank Alliance (PSBA) are adopting AWS technology to build scalable solutions.

PSBA, an umbrella organisation formed by 12 public sector banks, has chosen AWS as a cloud service provider to offer cloud computing services to such banks. This empanelment will enable the banks to adopt AWS through PSBA’s Community Cloud Services, without creating separate procurement processes for their cloud computing requirements. It will allow AWS to provide its services to member banks through two AWS Managed Service Providers (MSP) – Orient Technologies and Hitachi Systems.

Leveraging AWS’ security, compliance and governance services will enable the banks to build a secure environment allowing them to innovate at a low cost. The banks can migrate to the cloud and adopt a more agile technology infrastructure in line with their business goals and digital transformation strategy, and leverage technology expertise from the MSPs.

PSBA will also provide banks access to software-as-a-service (SaaS) based financial service marketplaces, enabling them to offer services like doorstep banking and subscribe to eBKray, an end-to-end listing and auction platform to manage non-performing asset (NPA) loans.

e-Marketplace(GeM)

The Government e-Marketplace (GeM), which the company claims to be the world’s second-largest public procurement platform, is also using AWS. AWS cloud enables GeM’s e-procurement features like direct purchasing, bidding, reverse auctions, price matching, and demand aggregation, as well as supporting the marketplace, business operations, analysis, customer support, and payment processing. GeM enables 9,000 page views per second, 1.5 million interactions every day, and a daily transaction average of nearly ₹1,000 crore in gross merchandise value.

The NHA is building on AWS to transform healthcare and establish an open digital health ecosystem in India. It aims to build integrated digital health infrastructure in India and provide health coverage to more than 550 million citizens through schemes like Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) and Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM).

The NHA is using AWS services to build core modules of the AB-PMJAY program–critical applications like Beneficiary Identification System and Transaction Management System – to manage beneficiary identification, and claim transaction management.

Alongside, in May 2023, AWS announced plans to invest an additional $12.7 ( ₹1,05,600 crore) billion in its cloud infrastructure in India by 2030, following its previous investment of $3.7 billion between 2016 and 2022. The company’s total investment outlay in India is US $16.4 billion ( ₹1,36,500 crores) by 2030. This investment is estimated to contribute $23.3 billion ( ₹1,94,700 crores) to India’s total GDP by 2030.

This planned investment in data centre infrastructure in India will support an average of 1,31,700 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs in Indian businesses each year. These positions, including construction, facility maintenance, engineering, telecommunications, and other jobs, are part of the data centre supply chain in India.

“This investment is to expand the cloud infrastructure in the country. India is aiming for a $1 trillion digital economy and $5 trillion overall economy in the future, and this can be powered through cloud computing. Whether start-ups, enterprises, government, or public sector enterprises, everybody needs a massive scale of compute, network, and storage,” Pankaj Gupta, Leader – Public Sector, AWS India, said. He added that AWS provides solutions across sectors like education & skilling, healthcare, agriculture, power, and smart metering.

Skill development

The company also works with other government entities and education customers like the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), which runs its citizen-scale skilling platform on AWS, and the Swachchata App by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) which uses AWS technologies for powering real-time geographic information system (GIS), analytics-based dashboards, business intelligence, IoT, and drone-based monitoring of sanitation assets and Digilocker.

AWS is also a technology enabler for edtech player PhysicsWallah. “AWS has has been supportive in terms of cloud partnership. All our mega classrooms use AWS infrastructure, so they are our infrastructure partner. It helps address challenges of scale and cost because,” said Prateek Maheshwari, Co-founder, Physics Wallah & Chair of IEC.

AWS is also working with Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd (MSEDCL), which is one of the world’s largest electricity distribution companies, said Gupta. “They have migrated more than 100 applications onto the cloud and over 99.5 per cent of Service Level Agreements (SLA). Even their managed database service runs on our platform,” he explained.

AWS also works with other State governments like Madhya Pradesh and Telangana. The latter has migrated its entire e-office platform for 33 districts on the cloud; even their state health insurance application runs on AWS, he added.  

Related Topics