Two men chat beside a logo of Alibaba at its headquarters on the outskirts of Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang province. [Photo/Agencies]

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's cloud computing unit said on Wednesday it will open a new data center in India next month, providing local clients with a suite of cloud products including computing, storage resources, and big-data processing ability.

The center, to be launched in Mumbai, India's economic and financial hub, underscored the tech giant's ambition to tap into small and medium-sized businesses in a country where digital economy has started to take off.

The move will enable Alibaba Cloud to work closely with and empower local Indian enterprises to expand their businesses beyond borders, said President Simon Hu.

"As we build the Alibaba network globally, India is another important piece that is now firmly in place," he said. "This continues our commitment to India, helping it to develop trade opportunities with other markets in the regions and beyond."

The data center, designed to support the region''s cloud needs for the next three to five years, will be primarily staffed by a local team providing services that range from consulting to after-sales supports, the company said.

Alibaba Cloud is the world's No 3 infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) provider, after Amazon.com Inc and Microsoft Corp, according to research firm Gartner Inc.

The Indian operation marks the latest addition to a slew of international coverage in key markets such as US, Germany, Singapore, and Japan. The company announced earlier this year that it would open a data center in Indonesia by the end of March 2018.