Bengaluru --- Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in India are set to benefit from a $30 million global "anti-COVID" programme that Alibaba Cloud, the data intelligence backbone of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, launched on Thursday.
The "Global SME Enablement Programme" will provide cloud technology relief to both new and existing SME customers of the company around the world and equip them with the solutions needed to maintain business continuity amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company is offering a $300 coupon package for all new SME customers, and a $500 coupon for its paying customers.
The new SME customers of the company worldwide can apply for the relief between now and June 22.
The portfolio consists of a support package with 12 key products, including Elastic Compute Service (ECS), which powers cloud applications with low latency, and Object Storage Service (OSS), an encrypted service for data storage and backup in the cloud, as well as Alibaba Cloud Academy Courses.
Existing customers can also apply for product coupons between now and June 22 to help them expand or upgrade their cloud applications, Alibaba Cloud said.
In addition, Alibaba Cloud said it will reach out to SME associations to help meet their members' technology needs as they fight the pandemic.
"India has a vision to increase the contribution from its MSME's (micro, small and medium enterprises) to its National GDP to 50 per cent and a large part of that growth will be possible in this day and age through empowering companies with technology," Alex Li, General Manager, Alibaba Cloud South Asia, said in a statement.
"The Alibaba Cloud Global SME Enablement Program aims to provide much needed and timely relief to SMEs so they can rapidly respond to the current crisis while speeding up their digital transformation and emerging from the current pandemic stronger and more resilient," Li added.
Alibaba Cloud announced the Global SME Enablement Programme during its Digital Cloud Day.
The interactive one-day online conference introduced Alibaba Cloud's latest technologies and customer case studies and in particular how Alibaba Cloud is applying cloud computing, data analytic, and artificial intelligence capabilities to help businesses and the wider communities better cope with COVID-19.
Alibaba Cloud this week announced to invest additional approximately $28 billion (RMB 200 billion) in the next three years on its cloud infrastructure, focusing on technologies including operating system, servers, chips and network.
