Google Cloud Platform will launch its first data center in India, stating it will come online before the end of this year.

The facility will be the first of at least three, as Google Cloud regions, are divided into several availability zones, each of which comprises at least one data center. While the company sometimes launches a region with two availability zones, all regions are planned to ultimately have at least three.

Bombay gold

The Alphabet subsidiary intends to carry out an aggressive expansion of its cloud offering in India, its fourth region in the Asia Pacific region, having recently launched one in Singapore, with others in Tokyo, Sydney and Taiwan.

It recently launched regions in Brazil, Germany and the UK (São Paulo, Frankfurt and London), with plans to further expand its footprint in the United States (Los Angeles), in Europe (Netherlands, Finland and Luxembourg, though the latter’s future is not set in stone), and in Canada (Montreal).

According to a study published in May by industry research group Gartner, the Indian data center market was the second fastest-growing market in the Asia Pacific region last year, valued at $2.2bn, and expected to reach $4.5bn next year.

Cloud titan AWS launched its first region in Mumbai last year, as part of a $5 billion investment Amazon is making in the country. Microsoft rolled out three Azure data centers in India in 2015, respectively located in Mumbai, Pune and Chennai.