Although India is not at the forefront of the global AI innovation battle, the country's demand for AI is growing as businesses seek efficiency and technology companies push for AI development as a panacea. The South Asian country's AI market is expected to reach $17 billion by 2027, according to a joint report by IT industry group Nasscom and consulting firm BCG.
Neysa, an Indian startup led by experienced technology entrepreneur Sharad Sanghi, aims to capitalize on this growth opportunity by offering its AI solutions to domestic and multinational companies.
The Mumbai-based startup provides AI and machine learning infrastructure and platforms as a service based on the requirements of enterprise customers. It also includes a dedicated machine learning operations and infrastructure consulting team to help customers find the right size for their infrastructure and fine-tune or customize the model they choose.
Before founding Neysa with former colleague Anindya Das in 2023, Sanghi spent more than 27 years at his previous venture and data center provider Netmagic, which was acquired by Japan's NTT Data in 2016. It was something I did. He told TechCrunch that his future focus will be on cloud infrastructure and AI. It was 2022, but I couldn't do that. He resigned as Managing Director and CEO of Netmagic in June 2023 to make a fresh start at Neysa.
“I joined Neysa with the goal of infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, inference as a service, a service layer around ML, and giving developers the platform they need,” he said in an interview. said.
Neysa Co-Founder and CEO Sharad Sanghi
Neysa initially started as an infrastructure services provider and in July launched Velocis, its flagship platform that provides on-demand access to computing infrastructure. However, it plans to expand its product lineup by launching a developer platform and inference-as-a-service by the end of the year. Sanghi said the startup is also working on developing “observability for better management” of infrastructure and securing AI workloads.
With its entire product suite ready, Neysa is targeting global hyperscalers, including typical cloud service providers such as AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure, as well as new-age competitors such as CoreWeave and Lambda Labs. We aim to compete with. Sanghi claimed that the startup differentiates itself from incumbents by offering “flexibility” in its model.
“We can offer both public clouds and private clusters, which is also due to the open source nature of our products. All of our platforms are built on open source platforms, so our clients can There are no inns,” he said.
The startup's consulting services also aim to attract local businesses, which often have difficulty acquiring the right infrastructure without spending thousands of dollars.
“Very often, clients come to us and say they want so many GPUs…and when we actually look at the requirements, they don't even need half the amount they asked for,” Sanghi said. says.
Neysa has raised $30 million in an all-equity Series A round co-led by existing investors NTTVC, Z47 (formerly Matrix Partners India), and Nexus Venture Partners. This follows the startup's $20 million seed round earlier this year.
Mr Sanghi said the new funding will strengthen Neisa's infrastructure, enhance research and development and expand market development. The funding will also establish the foundation for the startup to launch an integrated Gen AI acceleration cloud service.
The startup currently has 55 employees and plans to scale by hiring more engineers and staff to expand direct and indirect sales.
Neysa currently has approximately 12 paying customers and approximately 6 large-scale proofs of concept. According to Sanghi, 70% of the overall customer base chooses private clusters, while the remaining 30% is on the public cloud.
Sanghi declined to name Neisa's customers, but said the startup caters to three broad categories: research institutes, AI-native startups, and enterprise customers, and was initially in the banking, manufacturing, and media sectors. Ta.
Neysa's current customer base is in India, but Sanghi said the startup plans to enter the global market with its next round of funding, which negotiations have already begun and will take place within the next six to nine months. It is scheduled to be completed by.
He declined to say exactly how much Neisa is looking to raise in its next round, but said it would be “an order of magnitude more than what we are currently raising.” The startup also plans to raise debt to meet its growing GPU and other infrastructure requirements.