New Delhi, Nov 1 (IANS): In a bid to help customers build efficient applications on Cloud, Google on Wednesday announced the opening of its first Google Cloud Platform region in Mumbai.

With the India region going live, enterprises will be able to take advantage of the high speeds, low latency and performance benefits uniquely offered by GCP (Google Cloud Platform) services.

Further, the Indian customers will now be able to buy these services directly in Indian currency.

"We are delighted to announce the first GCP region in India. The new region will help customers build applications and store their data, and significantly improve latency for customers and end users in the area," said Dave Stiver, Product Manager, Google Cloud Platform.

The India region offers several services, including compute, big data, storage and networking.

The launch of the Cloud region, which will have three zones, also opens up newer opportunities for several new partners who will benefit from building their services on Google Cloud.

The new Mumbai region joins Singapore, Taiwan, Sydney and Tokyo in the Asia-Pacific region.

"Hosting applications in the new region can improve latency from 20-90 per cent for end users in Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and, of course, Mumbai, compared to hosting them in the other closest region, Singapore," Stiver added.

Google Cloud Platform enables the developers to build, test and deploy applications on Google's highly-scalable and reliable infrastructure.

"GCP gave us a low latency network and the ability to optimise costs further with custom machine types. The new India region will help us bring our service even closer to Indian consumers," said Manish Verma, Chief Technology Officer, Hungama.