With growing momentum around artificial intelligence and cloud adoption, Indian enterprises are looking for strategic ways to optimize technology investments, achieve data sovereignty, and enhance cybersecurity.
Rajgopal A S, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer, NxtGen Cloud Technologies Pvt Ltd, in a recent conversation with CIO&Leader, outlines how his company is helping enterprises leverage AI-driven solutions through innovative initiatives such as SpeedCloud, sovereign cloud capabilities, and energy-efficient data center technologies.
Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer,
NxtGen Cloud Technologies
Rajgopal emphasises NxtGen’s approach to democratizing cloud access and AI adoption, creating value by significantly reducing operational costs and enhancing security through a layered cybersecurity approach. His strategic vision for the coming years involves substantial investment in infrastructure and talent, aiming to position India as a leading global hub for AI services and cloud innovation. Edited excerpts as below:
CIO&Leader: Raj congratulations on collaborating with India’s MEIT to build the India AI Vision. Could you share your approach to making this vision a reality?
Rajgopal: India AI Vision represents an exceptional opportunity—not just for us but for the entire Indian technology ecosystem. It’s one of the most mature and comprehensive AI strategies globally. Our goal was clear: deliver significant value to end-users, the government, and the broader industry by reducing costs while ensuring profitability. Initially, the government targeted deploying 10,000 units, but through our efforts, we reduced market prices by nearly 64%, enabling India to expand its goal to 18,000 units. This approach benefits industry, academia, and research by making advanced technologies more accessible and affordable.
CIO&Leader: That’s remarkable savings for the government and industry. NxtGen is known for innovation, especially with your recent SpeedCloud initiative. How is this benefiting enterprise technology leaders?
Rajgopal: SpeedCloud emerged from our intent to challenge high pricing models by global cloud providers. Global giants often charge exorbitant premiums—AWS, for instance, contributes less than 20% of Amazon’s revenue but accounts for over 60% of profits. By building our cloud infrastructure on open-source technologies, we drastically reduced customer costs, often by over 80%, while still maintaining profitability. Additionally, SpeedCloud emphasizes true sovereignty—not only data sovereignty but also technological and operational sovereignty. This allows enterprises to achieve scale, security, and affordability without compromising control.
CIO&Leader: How is NxtGen making AI adoption easier for Indian enterprises?
Rajgopal: Enterprises care about solving practical problems, not the underlying technical details like GPUs. Our goal is to simplify AI adoption through use-case-driven services. Rather than providing just hardware, we deliver fully managed AI solutions—from data preparation and model selection to customization and deployment. Whether enterprises need document analysis, generative AI applications, or other use cases, our platform simplifies the entire journey, empowering customers to harness AI effectively without worrying about the complexities involved.
CIO&Leader: You touched on security and governance earlier. How is NxtGen helping enterprises secure their AI and cloud environments?
Rajgopal: We advocate a layered, multi-vendor security approach instead of relying on a single OEM. For example, we use Palo Alto Networks for firewall security, Imperva for web application firewall (WAF), and separate vendors for extended detection and response (XDR). This layered strategy reduces dependency on any single vendor and mitigates cascading vulnerabilities, significantly enhancing security posture. Enterprises should consider this best-of-breed approach, especially given the complexity and scale of modern data and cloud environments.
CIO&Leader: Sustainability is increasingly important, especially given India’s expected growth in data centers. Can you share how NxtGen addresses sustainability through your cooling technology innovation?
Rajgopal: Traditionally, data centers use air-cooling, but liquid cooling has become increasingly common. We took this innovation further by integrating synthetic diamond layers, which provide five times better heat conductivity compared to copper. This dramatically improves cooling efficiency, allowing GPUs to run at higher utilization for longer durations and extending their lifespan. By improving energy efficiency, this technology significantly supports enterprises’ sustainability goals.
CIO&Leader: Finally, looking ahead three to five years, what are NxtGen’s investment plans, and what’s your advice to technology leaders adopting AI?
Rajgopal: We see enormous potential for India to lead globally in AI services. Our immediate investments include deploying 12,000 advanced GPUs and expanding our workforce with an additional 420 AI engineers, creating a robust team of 500 specialists. We’re investing approximately USD 400 million to build advanced AI infrastructure. My advice to technology leaders is simple: focus on adoption and innovation rather than waiting for perfect security. AI is evolving rapidly, and organizations must act swiftly to leverage these technologies to stay competitive globally.