Digital
LS Digital announces partnership with .fearless
Mumbai – LS Digital has announced a new partnership with .fearless to launch .fear-LS. This joint venture aims to leverage the strengths of both the companies to solve the industry pain point of digital friction; an operational disconnect within the customer journey, and help businesses optimize their current systems and processes, significantly drive growth, and increase return on investment.
Many companies in the USA face digital friction, struggling to meet customer expectations and maximise revenue due to challenges within their systems. fear-LS addresses these issues by helping businesses across industries better understand their existing systems, identify underperforming areas, and implement strategies to streamline operations and enhance success. The U.S. market, known for its large-scale operations and a blend of traditional practices with openness to innovation, presents unique challenges and opportunities. With the rapid growth of the DBT category, LS Digital is poised to leverage this momentum to drive business success in this dynamic landscape.
The US market has been an early adopter of digital technologies, leading to robust foundational operations. This also presents challenges in integrating newer technologies to their legacy systems. “Technology has dramatically transformed the customer journey, leading to a significant rise in customer interactions with brands. However, digital friction within existing systems often drives customers away.” said Mike Head from .fearless. LS Digital’s well-established 6-pillar DBT framework, is uniquely positioned to deliver significant value to future-focused businesses. .fear-LS stands out in the market with differentiated services and in-house credibility to meet evolving customer needs. Speaking on this JV, Mike further added, “We are excited to partner with LS Digital, a leader in digital business transformation. Together, we will combine our unique insights and resources to help businesses create a seamless, results-driven digital presence that not only meets but exceeds customer expectations.”
77 per cent of businesses today say that consumer expectations have increased in the last year, but if companies have digital friction between their systems, they will be unable to meet increased expectations. By providing a comprehensive suite of services, .fear-LS provides companies with a roadmap to optimize and leverage digital processes and the executional capabilities for business transformation and increased return on investment.
There is a worldwide surge in companies embracing digital business transformation to eliminate friction and fuel growth. “Our focus is on delivering a product and service mix that stands out in the market. We build trust by connecting with the right customers and gaining a deep understanding of the new digital landscape, rather than just chasing revenue.” said LS Digital founder & CEO Prasad Shejale. Commenting on LS Digital’s global expansion, Prasad added, “Partnering with .fearless, a leader in marketing consultancy and industry veterans in the US market, aligns perfectly with our global ambitions. Through this joint venture, we are excited to bring our innovative DBT model, developed in India, for the world. Under the banner of .fear-LS, this partnership offers American businesses cutting-edge solutions to overcome digital friction and achieve sustainable growth.”
Digital
Google partners with Adani and Airtel to build India’s largest AI data centre
The three-campus complex, built with Adani and Airtel, is India’s largest-ever technology infrastructure investment
Visakhapatnam: Google has broken ground on what it is billing as India’s largest-ever technology infrastructure project: a gigawatt-scale artificial intelligence hub in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, built in partnership with AdaniConneX and Nxtra by Airtel. The ceremony at Tarluvada on 28th April marked the start of construction on a three-campus data centre complex that sits at the heart of a $15 billion investment Google has committed to deploying across India between 2026 and 2030.
The numbers are staggering by any measure. Nearly 1 gigawatt of compute capacity at a single location, three data centre campuses, a fibre-optic expansion under the America-India Connect initiative, and a long-term clean energy strategy designed to feed new renewable supply into the national grid. Google says the project will help India hit its target of 500 gigawatts of non-fossil fuel capacity by 2030 while delivering the high-performance, low-latency infrastructure that businesses need to build and scale AI-powered services.
The groundbreaking drew a formidable gathering of political and corporate India. Union minister for information technology Ashwini Vaishnaw, Andhra Pradesh chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and state IT minister Nara Lokesh attended alongside Google Cloud chief executive Thomas Kurian, Adani Group directors Karan Adani and Jeet Adani, and Bharti Enterprises vice chairman Rakesh Mittal.
Vaishnaw framed the project in terms of national ambition. “The India AI hub and three subsea cables landing in Visakhapatnam will become very important infrastructure for the country’s journey forward,” he said, adding his thanks to Google for its “continued trust in India.” Naidu was equally bullish, describing Andhra Pradesh as “India’s premier investment destination” and the Vizag hub as a cornerstone of the state’s technology corridor. “Our vision goes beyond attracting investment,” he said. “We want local talent, startups, and enterprises to become active partners in this technology-driven growth story.”
Kurian called the groundbreaking “a powerful realization of our shared vision with the Indian government, and an inflection point for the country’s AI-native future.” Jeet Adani was characteristically direct: “When energy becomes more affordable and increasingly powered by clean sources, intelligence becomes more accessible, and that is how India will lead the next phase of digital growth.” Gopal Vittal, executive vice chairman of Bharti Airtel, said the full stack of data centres, green power, pan-India fibre and a next-generation cable landing station would enable “large-scale, world-class AI infrastructure in Vizag.”
The project was first announced in October 2025. AdaniConneX and Nxtra by Airtel will lead construction of the data centre buildings and connecting infrastructure, with Google deploying its AI capabilities on top.
Beyond the hardware, Google has announced a substantial package of community programmes. On water, it is partnering with Sponge Collaborative on a watershed management plan linking coastal ecosystem restoration with clean drinking water systems, including reverse osmosis plants and Water ATMs, for local residents. On livelihoods, a tie-up with the Sambhav Foundation will equip more than 1,000 fisherfolk with GPS navigation, weather-forecasting tools, cold-chain management training and UPI-based financial literacy. The Google Udaan India Fund, run through ChangeX, will provide direct grants to local schools and social enterprises for AI skilling labs and digital literacy programmes. The NARI Shakti programme, developed with the Learning Links Foundation, will support more than 10,000 women entrepreneurs from low-income backgrounds in building micro-enterprises. The Skills Trade and Readiness programme will prepare more than 1,000 local workers for construction, welding and facility operations roles, while a parallel tie-up with ICT Academy will train more than 1,200 students and educators in cloud computing and generative AI.
The groundbreaking was accompanied by the Bharat AI Shakti Conclave, a conference organised with the Andhra Pradesh government and Nara Lokesh, bringing together suppliers, industry partners and infrastructure firms to map how Google’s anchor investment can be turned into a broader economic value chain for the region. The conclave’s central theme was building an AI industrial corridor, with a local-first procurement approach and the integration of regional small and medium enterprises into Google’s global operational frameworks.
Every major technology company in the world has been courting India. What sets Vizag apart is the sheer scale of the commitment and the deliberate effort to build an industrial ecosystem around it rather than simply plant servers in a field. Google is not just betting on India’s digital future; it is trying to build the factory floor on which that future gets made. Whether the $15 billion translates into genuine local opportunity, or merely into an impressive data centre humming quietly on the Andhra Pradesh coast, will depend on whether those community programmes prove as durable as the hardware. The groundbreaking, as ever, is the easy part.
