Making her maiden trip to India, Safra Catz, Chief Executive Officer, Oracle, on her whirlwind visit to the national capital on Friday met the powers that be including Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

While announcing three new business initiatives for India, she acknowledged that when compared to the company’s investments here, the returns are very less.

However, Chief of the cloud computing major said that she sees a lot of opportunities here, especially with projects like ‘Digital India’ and ‘Make in India’. Catz said the investments by Oracle would support the country’s global digital leadership.

“Our revenues in India are dwarfed by our investments. Very large percentage of our $5.5 billion a year in R&D investment is done here. We invest significantly more in the country than the country pays us,” she said.

“But, I do believe that to make ‘Digital India’ successful, technology is a very critical enabler and our technology is been central to the digital expansion of nearly every country in the world,” she added. Catz said that Oracle plays an important role in every industry, including telecommunication, utilities, retail, government – and as the market increases, India would also advance more and Oracle will be also be a beneficiary to that.

The company, which has multiple businesses in India including sales and marketing and R&D with around 40,000 employees, also said it would set up more data centres here, as its cloud business is expanding.

Growing cloud business



“We already have data centres in India and we are expecting more because of our cloud business is expanding,” she said, adding that investment for data centres would most likely be in partnerships with groups like Bharti Airtel, which have ‘lot of experience in these areas’.

The company proposes to invest over $400 million in Bengaluru for a new campus, open nine incubation centres, and train five-lakh students each year to develop computer science skills.

This will be the largest campus outside the US and will seat 11,000 employees, which will be ready in the next five years.

The company also said it would be hiring 2,000 as and when required for its various divisions.

“I am particularly excited about the incubation centres which will house substantial software and technology capabilities, tools, and training to help launch new technology start-ups built utilising Java and the Oracle platform,” she added.