New Delhi, July 16 -- As cloud adoption grows in India, the ecosystem is shifting. While large enterprises have traditionally driven demand, startups and small to mid-sized businesses (SMB) are now playing a bigger role, especially as they look for infrastructure that meets local needs around cost, compliance, and flexibility. Neon Cloud, a public cloud platform from Progression Infonet, is designed with these users in mind. Progression has worked with enterprise clients for over three decades, and with Neon Cloud, it's extending that experience. In a conversation with TechCircle, Sarthak Hooda, Founder and CEO of Neon Cloud, talks about how cloud strategies are evolving in India, the practical challenges businesses face, the real meaning of flexibility in cloud services, and why the country needs to build its own global-scale cloud provider. Edited Excerpts:
What are the key trade-offs businesses face when choosing cloud infrastructure, and how are they changing?
Neon Cloud is a public cloud platform launched by our parent company, Progression Infonet. It's a self-service platform that brings together the core components of any cloud setup, compute, storage, and networking, into a single system that's straightforward to use. Neon Cloud is mainly focused on startups, small and medium businesses, and developers. In contrast, Progression as a company traditionally serves enterprise clients. The main challenges companies face, the most common one is cost, especially for startups and SMBs. Enterprises don't usually have the same level of concern, but for smaller companies, cost remains a significant hurdle. That's one of the areas we're targeting with Neon Cloud. Unlike hyperscalers like AWS or Azure, who bill in US dollars, we offer a simple pay-as-you-go pricing model in Indian rupees, based on hourly resource consumption. Many customers find this more accessible and easier to manage. Another important topic, especially in India and Europe, is the idea of Sovereign Cloud. Neon Cloud is hosted and fully managed within India, which allows us to meet local compliance needs and serve sectors like FinTech and BFSI more effectively.
Is the vendor lock-in narrative misunderstood or oversimplified, especially in India? What does real flexibility require, technically or from a business standpoint?
Vendor lock-in, as we see it, comes down to whether a user can easily start using a platform and just as easily leave it. At Neon Cloud, we've designed our offering to avoid lock-in by keeping things flexible and straightforward. The platform is fully self-service, so users can sign up in less than five minutes, complete their onboarding and KYC process, and start using the service without needing to go through any manual steps or approvals. If at any point they decide the platform isn't meeting their needs, they can exit just as easily, without being tied down by long-term contracts or restrictive agreements. We don't impose any conditions that require users to commit beyond what they're comfortable with. Instead, we let them use the platform for whatever duration suits their business needs, whether that's a short-term project, a proof of concept, or a long-running application. This level of flexibility allows businesses to manage their own timelines and adapt quickly as their requirements change. Vendor lock-in is a major concern, especially in the Indian market, where businesses are increasingly looking for more control and fewer dependencies. That's why we've built Neon Cloud in a way that keeps the user in charge, from onboarding to exit. Thanks for raising the point-it's one of the most important issues we're aiming to solve.
How have mid-sized firms and enterprises shifted their cloud strategies in the last 2-3 years, and what's been driving those changes-cost, talent, regulation, or something else?
One of the main challenges we saw when we entered the market in 2010 was that many enterprises were hesitant to move to the cloud. The concerns were mostly around security and high costs. At the time, most companies had their applications, especially SAP, running on-premise. This required them to maintain a dedicated team just to monitor hardware and resources around the clock. These setups also occupied office space and were expensive due to the hardware requirements. As cloud providers, we've taken on much of that load. We're able to do this efficiently by leveraging long-standing relationships and partnerships with major hardware vendors like HPE, which helps us offer services at significantly lower costs to our customers. When it comes to manpower, especially in IT, it's not a major challenge in India. There's a strong talent pool available. But the issue is different for manufacturing businesses running business-critical applications like SAP. Setting up and maintaining on-premise infrastructure or even a private cloud environment in their own facilities pulls focus and resources away from their core operations. It's not just about the financial cost, it's also about the time and energy needed to invest in training and maintaining IT staff. Instead, they can offload that responsibility to a provider like us. We've been in the IT space for over 30 years and have the experience to manage these environments efficiently. That's a key reason many businesses choose to work with us.
As AI and machine learning workloads grow, how are infrastructure needs changing, and are most companies truly ready, or is there a gap between hype and reality?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is growing rapidly, we've all seen it in the news and with developments from companies like OpenAI. Right now, AI works well for broad, general-purpose applications like generative AI. But for more specific, real-world use cases to mature, it will take a few years and a deeper understanding of individual businesses. For companies looking to adopt AI or automation to improve efficiency or workflows, the first step is understanding their own operations in detail. They need to streamline their processes before AI can provide real value. Jumping into AI just because it's trending isn't the right approach. That said, the potential of AI to drive meaningful change is significant. At Neon Cloud, we're working on offering GPU as a service. Customers will be able to access a portion of a GPU rather than having to invest in an entire unit, which can be costly. This is especially useful for smaller workloads or limited use cases. We expect to launch this on our platform within the next six months. There's a lot happening in AI, and the opportunities ahead are substantial.
With hyperscalers growing fast in India, is there still room for regional or niche providers to lead in areas like compliance, heavy industries, or latency-sensitive apps?
Yes, absolutely. One example is Sovereign Cloud, which I mentioned earlier. Local cloud providers like us are in a strong position because we operate across multiple locations within India. This geographic presence allows us to offer infrastructure and services that align with emerging regulatory and policy requirements. The government is increasingly focused on data security and sovereignty. One of the key priorities is ensuring that certain categories of data, especially sensitive or regulated data, stay within the country's borders. This is not just a policy direction but is becoming a regulatory necessity in several sectors. For companies in fintech and the broader banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) space, storing data within India is not optional, it's a basic compliance requirement. Local cloud providers are in a better position to meet these needs by offering infrastructure that keeps data within the country, which is becoming critical as both regulators and clients pay closer attention to data residency and governance.
Do you think localisation is giving an edge to regional cloud providers or creating new challenges and opportunities for companies in India?
This is creating more opportunities for regional providers. One reason is that hyperscalers don't offer managed services-they focus only on compute and infrastructure. At Neon Cloud, we go beyond infrastructure by providing full managed services. We handle our clients' infrastructure 24/7. That's a key advantage we offer. Another important feature we've built into our platform-and will continue to expand, is localisation. We support around 30 to 40 regional languages. If a user prefers to use the platform in Hindi, for example, they can switch to it instantly, and the interface updates to that language. This gives us a clear edge. We already have this in place, and as a company based in India, with deep experience in the region, we understand our customers and their pain points well. That's another advantage we bring to the table.
What changes do you see in the Indian cloud ecosystem over the next 3 to 5 years?
One of the key shifts I see is that while this conversation focuses on enterprises, the real driving force behind India's economic future will likely be startups and SMBs. These smaller players are the ones leading innovation and creating practical value through AI and other technologies. That's why we're placing our bets on them. We want to support them in building strong products, and I believe it's time for one of the world's major cloud providers to come from India. Right now, most big players, AWS, DigitalOcean, and others, are based in other countries. There's no major cloud provider from India, and that needs to change. Achieving that will go hand in hand with the growth and success of Indian startups and SMBs.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from TechCircle.