Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Chinese e-tailer giant Alibaba, on Friday announced the launch of its second data centre in India.

The new "availability zone", located in Mumbai, will offer product lines such as Elastic Computing, Storage, Database, Network, Application Services and Big Data Analytics to support the requirements of local governments and enterprises in the Alibaba Cloud India region, the company said in a statement. 

"The commencement of the second availability zone reiterates our focus on India as a key market in Alibaba Cloud's global expansion strategy," said Alex Li, General Manager, Alibaba Cloud India.

In January this year, Alibaba Cloud set up its first India data centre in Mumbai to meet the surge in demand for Cloud computing services among the growing number of Indian small and medium-sized businesses.

Dual availability zones will further enhance the level of security of Alibaba Cloud's data centres in India, the company said. 

The new availability zone is part of Alibaba Cloud's strategy to expand its global footprint in order to serve a growing client base while also targeting new local customers. 

"India presents a unique growth opportunity with digital transformation set to add close to $154 billion to India's GDP," Li said.

Alibaba Cloud also launched this year distribution channel programme in India with HCL Infosystems Ltd and Ingram Micro as value-added distributors. 

The distribution channel programme encourages partners to bring in-depth technical knowledge and build an open ecosystem among sales, technology and service partners.

To further strengthen this network, Alibaba Cloud said it would train 1,000 sales and technology personnel in India by March 2019.