It’s a wrap: News this week (April 27 – May 1)

India’s digital and technology ecosystem saw activity across payments, artificial intelligence infrastructure, and IT services deals this week. Large-scale investments and acquisitions point to continued expansion in financial services and AI capacity. 

UPI hits record scale in FY26

India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) marked a decade of operations with record annual transaction volume and value in FY26.

The platform processed over ₹314 lakh crore in transaction value during the year, reflecting sharp growth from its early years and continued adoption across retail and merchant payments.

UPI has evolved into a core payments rail in India, supporting peer-to-peer transfers, merchant payments, and financial services use cases. It is now the largest real-time payments system globally by volume.

Tech Mahindra expands its BFSI play with Avant acquisition

Tech Mahindra said it will acquire an 85% stake in Canada-based Avant Techno Solutions for about CAD 28 million as part of a multi-tranche deal.

The acquisition will be executed through its subsidiary and is expected to close by July 2026, with the remaining 15% to be acquired by 2029.

Avant brings capabilities in payments modernisation, wealth platforms, and cloud transformation for banking systems. The deal is aimed at strengthening Tech Mahindra’s banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) portfolio in North America and adding domain expertise in areas such as open banking and fraud prevention.

Gorilla Technology, Yotta expand $2.8 billion AI infra deal

Gorilla Technology Group and Yotta Data Services expanded their artificial intelligence infrastructure partnership in India to about $2.8 billion.

The latest phase includes the deployment of 20,736 GPU units, significantly scaling earlier plans that covered over 5,000 GPUs across high-performance servers.

The rollout, targeted for completion by September 2026, reflects rising demand for large-scale AI compute infrastructure across enterprise and government use cases in India.

Google begins work on $15 billion AI hub in Vizag

Google has started construction of a $15 billion AI data centre hub in Visakhapatnam in partnership with AdaniConneX and Bharti Airtel.

The project is among the largest foreign direct investments in India’s digital infrastructure and is expected to support AI and cloud ecosystem growth.

The facility will serve as a large-scale AI and cloud infrastructure hub, contributing to job creation and positioning the region as a key node in India’s digital economy.