Can Neysa be India's AI Cloud alternative to AWS, Azure & Google Cloud? | Sharad Sanghi

Apr 11, 2025

Sharad Sanghi, CEO of Neysa and pioneer of India's first data center, discusses his journey from cloud computing to AI. He shares insights on making AI accessible with low-code solutions that streamline model training and deployment. Sanghi emphasizes the need for local AI clouds in India and explores the evolving dynamics in AI adoption, particularly in banking. He delves into the challenges of scaling data centers and the importance of ethical considerations in AI. With $50M in funding, Neysa is positioned to play a key role in India's AI landscape.

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INSIGHT

Neysa Simplifies AI Adoption

Neysa simplifies AI adoption by providing an all-in-one platform for training, testing, deploying, and monitoring AI models with low-code/no-code options.
It targets enterprises lacking AI expertise, aiming to accelerate AI production use cost-effectively.

ANECDOTE

From NetMagic to Neysa AI Cloud

Sharad started NetMagic in 1998 focusing on internet infrastructure for mission-critical businesses instead of retail internet.
After NetMagic's acquisition, he founded Neysa to build an AI cloud platform in India with substantial GPU infrastructure.

INSIGHT

Importance of Local AI Clouds

Local AI cloud providers in India are critical due to data sovereignty and security, amidst few existing scalable cloud providers.
Neysa differentiates with private cluster offerings, flexible platforms, transparent and competitive pricing.

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Meet Sharad Sanghi who built India’s first data center, he spent 25 years building Netmagic, India’s largest data center company. He came to India in 1995, worked at VSNL as the country was discovering the internet, and built a company focused on internet for businesses.

Now he is building Neysa, an AI cloud startup, which recently raised $50M to help businesses adopt AI, all from India.

With Neysa businesses can use AI without writing a lot of code or use five different tools to run it. And do everything—train models, test them, deploy them, and monitor them—in one single dashboard.

Sharad has a lot of perspective to share—as someone who was at the forefront while India adopted the internet, and now, the AI wave.

If you're building in AI, part of an enterprise exploring AI, or simply thinking about where India is in the AI race—this episode is for you.

0:00 – Trailer

02:00 – How Neysa makes AI easy & cheap?

04:37 – From datacentre to AI

06:54 – 1200 GPUs & 15 Clients

07:24 – Selling internet to Businesses

12:03 – Why India Needs Local AI Clouds

13:20 – How Neysa Plans to Stand Out

15:14 – Is Scaling a Hyperscaler Easy?

19:26 – Can India Shift from IT to AI?

26:40 – AI in Large Enterprises vs Mid-Market

27:51 – AI Revolution vs Cloud in 2006

31:06 – What’s the Moat for AI Startups?

33:08 – Is Private Data the Real AI Goldmine?

35:59 – Why Product & GTM Matter Early On

38:06 – Why Scaling must come before Demand

42:12 – OpenAI’s edge on Deepseek?

44:52 – How should enterprises navigate AI?

46:32 – Did Only NVIDIA Predict the AI Boom?

48:17 – Founder 1.0 V/S 2.0

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Hi, I am your host Siddhartha! I have been an entrepreneur from 2012-2017 building two products AddoDoc and Babygogo. After selling my company to SHEROES, I and my partner Nansi decided to start up again. But we felt unequipped in our skillset in 2018 to build a large company. We had known 0-1 journeys from our startups but lacked the experience of building 1-10 journeys.

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This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.

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