Although India is not at the forefront of the global AI innovation war, demand for AI in the country is growing as businesses seek efficiencies and technology companies promote AI development as a panacea. The South Asian country is expected to have an AI market worth $17 billion by 2027, according to a joint report by IT industry body Nasscom and consulting firm BCG.
Neysa, an Indian startup led by seasoned tech entrepreneur Sharad Sanghi, aims to capitalize on this growth opportunity by providing AI solutions to domestic and multinational companies.
The Mumbai-based startup provides AI and machine learning infrastructure and platforms as a service as per the requirements of enterprise customers. We also include 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 models they choose.
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, before founding Neysa with former colleague Anindya Das in 2023. He told TechCrunch: It’s 2022 and we haven’t been able to do that. He resigned as Managing Director and CEO of Netmagic in June 2023 to start anew at Neysa.
“I started at Neysa with the view of providing infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, inference as a service, a service layer around ML, as well as the platform that developers need,” he said in an interview.
Neysa initially started as an infrastructure services provider and launched its flagship platform, Velocis, in July to provide on-demand access to computing infrastructure. However, we plan to expand our product lineup by launching a developer platform and inference-as-a-service before the end of the year. The startup is also working to develop “observability for better management” of infrastructure and secure AI workloads, Sanghi said.
With its full suite in place, Neysa seeks to compete with global hyperscalers, including common cloud service providers such as AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure, as well as new-age competitors such as CoreWeave and Lambda Labs. Sanghi argued that startups differentiate themselves from established players by offering “flexibility” in their models.
“We can offer both public cloud and private clusters. This is also the open source nature of our products. All of our platforms are built on open source platforms, so there is no client lock-in,” he said.
The startup’s consulting services also aim to attract local businesses who find it difficult to secure appropriate infrastructure without spending thousands of dollars.
“A lot of times clients come to us and say they want too many GPUs. If you actually look at the requirements, we don’t even need half the amount they asked for,” Sanghi said.
Neysa 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.
Sanghi said the new funds will strengthen Neysa’s infrastructure, enhance R&D and expand its market presence. The funding will also lay the foundation for the startup to launch integrated Gen AI accelerated cloud services.
The startup currently has 55 employees and plans to grow by adding more engineers and employees to expand direct and indirect sales.
Neysa currently has about a dozen paying customers and is running about six large-scale proofs of concept. About 70% of the total customer base has chosen private clusters, while the remaining 30% are using public cloud, Sanghi said.
Sanghi did not disclose the names of Neysa’s customers, but said it is initially targeting three broad categories: research institutions, AI-based startups and enterprise customers in the banking, manufacturing and media sectors.
Neysa’s current customer base is in India, but Sanghi said the startup has plans to enter global markets with its next round of funding. Discussions on this have already begun and are expected to be completed in the next six to nine months.
He wouldn’t reveal the exact amount Neysa hopes to raise in the next round, but said it would be “a lot more than what we’ve raised currently.” The startup also plans to raise debt to meet its growing GPU and other infrastructure requirements.
