Naver moved to fully target the India market by entering a strategic partnership with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India's largest IT service corporations.
Choi Soo-yeon, Naver's CEO, signed a memorandum of understanding with TCS at the Korea-India Business Forum in New Delhi on the 20th, agreeing to jointly identify local business opportunities centered on artificial intelligence (AI), cloud, and consumer services.
The agreement also aligns with the widening of bilateral economic cooperation discussions prompted by President Lee Jae-myung's visit to India. Korea and India also set a goal that day to expand trade to $50 billion by 2030.
Partner TCS, the core IT affiliate of Tata Group, is a mega-operator with last fiscal year revenue exceeding $30 billion (about 4.4 trillion won) and a workforce topping 600,000. With customer networks and operational experience built across multiple industries—including finance, manufacturing, retail, telecommunications, and healthcare—Naver has effectively secured a springboard to rapidly tailor and apply its platform technology and AI services to local demand. Some also see this as more than a simple technology tie-up, interpreting it as securing a bridgehead to expand into India's corporate and public sectors.
The market environment is also favorable. Backed by the "IndiaAI Mission," the Indian government is injecting 1.03 trillion rupees (about 16.3 trillion won) in funding and accelerating the expansion of AI infrastructure, data, and talent bases.
More recently, it has actively expanded the AI ecosystem, including by opening more than 38,000 high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs). If Naver's service operations capabilities built in search, commerce, and cloud are combined with TCS's local network, there is a strong outlook that customized business models targeting AX and DX demand could emerge in India.