CEO, DigiBoxx
“We’ve had great support from the government who realized this is the need of the hour,” said Arnab Mitra, CEO of DigiBoxx, in a conversation with CIO&Leader. DigiBoxx is his latest venture, launched in 2020 and tagged as India’s 1st public cloud/digital asset management platform.
Resonating with the government’s ‘Make in India’ call, Arnab started DigiBoxx after realizing India needed to have its own SaaS product that allowed citizens to create and save data on Indian servers. The company follows data regulatory compliance and Indian laws, like the Personal Data Protection Bill.
Arnab hopes to provide secure, fast, intuitive, and affordable service plans for individuals and businesses. A platform that allows to easily share, store, track, and manipulate assets, all on an Indian server.
“I’d be happy with every single Indian having DigiBoxx on their phones,” Arnab comments when asked if he is happy with the progress his company has made since its launch. “A little unhappy with the pace of growth but really happy with the growth of the product.”
But what about the Artificial Intelligence push? When asked about the evolving role of AI, he has a very different perspective. “I think as a country we are getting it wrong. We are again becoming consumers, while somebody is creating it somewhere, sitting somewhere else.” His solution? creating a homegrown AI.
“We are working on it.” Arnabs tells how his team has been working on the large language models they have to train themselves because there are languages and challenges he is happy to tackle because they are their own. “We are trying to catch up with international products. We have taken a mixed approach, learning from what others are doing and building.”
AI business requires data, lots of it. And DigiBoxx has almost 4 million users, which are using its products on daily basis. The team is training its artificial brain on regular basis, and really fast. As per Arnab, DigiBoxx’s primary focus is building the said technology rather than borrowing it.
However, with so much data comes the question about its safety and compliance. “I think the government has done a fantastic job of building a good public and private partnership in our data structures,” says Arnab regarding the policies and laws around AI. “It took us some time to arrive at a data protection bill. And I’m very confident that an AI regulation won’t take that long. So I think the question is how much are we going to continue to use AI which is borrowed from other countries.”
Arnab questions the integrity of the data being used and sent to foreign AI-based servers. His main concern lies with the output of data, “500 to 900 million internet users who are regularly sending inputs to a server which is not in our country.” Someone could exploit this information/data, and Arnab believes we should be able to protect ourselves. We can start by building something of our own.
Arnab highlighted that there are only 16 data centres in the country which are authorised by Meity, and DigiBoxx has partnered with three of them. The benefit of this is the 32 checkpoints created by the government, so its policy will ensure that the data centre is actually equipped with the security solution to protect the data.
“In terms of software, we are building something in 2020, 2023, 2024, the tech we are implementing is significantly advanced that lot of our players which they started the product 10-12 years back. Every two years, the efficiency of the tech world is becoming double than what it is used to be.” Another way DigiBoxx ensures privacy is encryption policies that ensure that the data is encrypted in transit.
Last year, DigiBoxx launched Megh3, India’s first S3 solution, in partnership with Hitachi Systems, a 100% subsidiary of Hitachi Japan. “Megh3’s response has been great. We’re getting a lot of government organizations and PSUs looking at it for their storage solutions.”
However Arnab followed that with an update. DigiBoxx for Gmail, a massive advancement. Apart from being able to store all attachments from and to DigiBoxx while sending mail, the 100 GB of the storage gmail storage solution is going to be available at 30 rupees per month.
Currently, the company is also seeing takers from the EV community. “EVs have a lot of data threats they want to store, and we are increasingly seeing them taking keen interest in India’s base storage because the EV regulations are not very clear,” Arnab clarifies. This makes India play safe and offer a solution by offering to store data in India.
DigiBoxx is following the path that was once taken by giants like AWS and Google. A new player in the industry will have to take time and focus on building trust. The products will have to offer everything the digital storage company needs to roll out, especially keeping Indians and their comfort in mind. And according to Arnab, DigiBoxx is ready for the challenge.
As of the target set by DigiBoxx, “We have set up a target as a board of directors that every one person in every 10 people in India should be a DigiBoxx customer, right? So, which means that we are targeting 140 million users by FY26.” And Arnab doesn’t think it’s impossible to achieve.
According to Arnab, almost 40% of Android users don’t know any other solution. They buy an Android phone and are, by design, routed to the Google ecosystem. They are not aware of the pros and cons of that ecosystem. So, if 6 out of 10 are naturally going to Google, DigiBoxx is aiming at the rest and trying to convert at least one.
When asked for advice for budding entrepreneurs, Arnab emphasized the core of the business, “A lot of people start a business to make money, and that is their core target. Money is the byproduct; the reality is that you need to solve a problem.”
