Google said its cloud region in the financial capital has gone live, marking the India entry of the global online advertising giant's offerings in the emerging area, where it trails Amazon and Microsoft. This is the first Google Cloud Platform (GCP) region in the country. It offers several services including computing, big data, storage and networking and customers will be able to pay in Indian Rupees for the services.

"The new region will help customers build applications and store their data, and significantly improve latency for customers and end users in the area," Google cloud Platform's product manager Dave Stiver said. He added that hosting applications in the new region can improve latency from 20-90 per cent for end users in Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and of course Mumbai, compared to hosting them in the other closest region, Singapore.

Other cloud regions in Asia Pacific are hosted from Taiwan, Sydney and Tokyo. The company had earlier said that it will have three such centres across the country, without spelling out the investment. The company has earmarked USD 30 billion of investments for the cloud offerings. In India, it has been serving companies like D B Media, Ashok Leyland, logistics player DTDC, and has also announced that Hike Messenger has shifted to its offerings recently.