Amazon is planning to set ups lofts in Bengaluru. Here’s what they are

Amazon is planning to set up ‘pop-up lofts’ for its cloud business-Amazon Web Services-in Bengaluru.

Lofts are large office and offer open office spaces to networking and consultancy services related to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to anyone who needs it.

They can also host bootcamps, training and workshops, etc. You can walk in at these lofts any time to discuss technical details, AWS offerings, etc.

"We are looking closely at Bengaluru to set up a loft. Obviously because of the startups, it is one of the places we are looking at very hard," Andy Jassy, chief executive officer at Amazon Web Services, told ET.

It is not necessary that these lofts have to be permanent, they can be temporary also like those in London and Tel Aviv.

Jassy said 89 of the top 100 startups in India were already on AWS.

Amazon launched its data centres in Mumbai, which will house AWS cloud.

"In our conversations with our customers, it was clear that they wanted a region in the country either for reasons of lower latency or for data sovereignty. We think having a region in the country will significantly accelerate our growth," Jassy told ET.

AWS, which is the dominant player in the public cloud market, is just the latest company to set up data centres in the country. Microsoft has already set up data centres that will be used by its Azure public cloud market.

"The opening of AWS' data centre will make it harder for Microsoft and IBM. They already had a good base and even some financial services clients without a data centre here, they will become more competitive," a technology analyst present at the Mumbai launch event told ET.

"We have saved two million customers about $350 million that would have been spent on AWS. Which technology company do you know that would do that and hurt their revenue? I don't think there are any," Jassy said. AWS was an innovator rather than an acquirer, he said.