India has the talent and market to become a global tech, manufacturing powerhouse: Intel's Sandra Rivera

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In terms of the opportunities Intel sees, Rivera said they see an opportunity in the buildup of the original equipment manufacturer (OEM), original design manufacturing (ODM) ecosystem, and the electronics manufacturing industry in India. She added that those they work with are also seeing an opportunity in India.

“They're investing in India and we're investing with them. We work so deeply with the ecosystem...Electronics manufacturing, we think, is a wonderful opportunity. We will be investing in the ecosystem. We'll be partnering with them to make sure that they can deliver products to market and you'll see many of the multinational companies that are in the server and ODM businesses coming here,” Rivera said.

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Intel has so far invested $9 billion in India. According to Rivera, progress in India with regard to technology has been faster than in countries such as Israel and the US, as the country has learned from the experiences of more mature markets and skipped over generations of technology that is not at the leading edge. “It's an exciting time to be here and it's a wonderful market for us to serve and ecosystem to invest in,” she said.

While Rivera did not commit to a dollar amount for Intel's investments in India moving forward, she said that the company has a very technical workforce in the country and that they will continue to invest in hardware and software engineering, validation, "and all of the work that it takes to build products."

India is a small but growing market, according to Rivera. “We think that we're in the early days of just how big this market is going to be. We have a long history of investing early; we were the first ones in Taiwan, Israel, Vietnam and Malaysia. We like being on the ground floor of a growth opportunity,” she said, stating that she believes India will be a huge consumption market for Intel going forward with investments being made by the government into digital transformation and infrastructure.

“We certainly know that the amount of data being created [is growing]. Compute needs to come to where the data is created and consumed, and so I think that with the continued digitisation of India and every part of our lives, this will be a growing market for us,” she said.

“The opportunity to build out more infrastructure here, more data centres, more enterprise solutions, software ecosystem, solutions and services is actually very exciting. And it's one of the reasons why, you know, we continue to invest not only in the workforce but also in the market opportunities here,’ she added.

Intel will partner with customers due to data sovereignty — where data that originates in India is to be processed in India. “All the infrastructure that will be built for that is clearly a core growth opportunity for our products. Working with the ecosystem and investing in software and hardware startups and partners is a great opportunity and exciting for us,” she said. The company also sees more data centres and infrastructure buildout happening in India.