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Although India is not at the forefront of the global battle for AI innovation, the demand for AI in the country is growing as companies seek efficiencies and technology companies promote AI developments as a cure-all. The South Asian country is expected to have a market for artificial intelligence To reach $17 billion by 2027According to a joint report by IT industry body Nasscom and consultancy BCG.
Nyssaan Indian startup led by veteran technology entrepreneur Sharad Sanghi, aims to capitalize on this growth opportunity by offering AI solutions to local and multinational companies in the country.
The Mumbai-based startup provides AI and machine learning infrastructure and platform as a service to enterprise customers based on their requirements. It also includes dedicated machine learning operations and infrastructure consulting teams to help customers find the right size for their infrastructure, and fine-tune or customize the models of their choice.
Before founding Neysa with former colleague Anindya Das in 2023, Sanghi spent more than 27 years at his previous enterprise and data center provider, Netmagic, which was acquired by Japanese company NTT Data in 2016. He told TechCrunch that he intends to focus on cloud infrastructure and artificial intelligence in 2022, but he was unable to do so. He resigned as Managing Director and CEO of Netmagic in June 2023 to start over with Neysa.
“I started at Neysa with the goal of providing infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, inference as a service, and the services layer around machine learning, as well as the platforms we need for developers,” he said in an interview.
Neysa initially started out as an infrastructure services provider and launched its flagship platform, Velocis, in July to provide on-demand access to computing infrastructure. However, it plans to expand the product lineup by launching a developer platform and inference-as-a-service before the end of the year. The startup is also developing “observability to better manage” its infrastructure and secure AI workloads, Sanghi said.
With its full suite of offerings ready, Neysa looks to compete with global scalers, including typical cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure, as well as new-age contenders like CoreWeave and Lambda Labs. Sanghi stressed that the startup differentiates itself from existing players by offering “flexibility” in its models.
“We can offer both public and private clouds. It’s also the open source nature of our offering. All of our platforms are built on open source platforms… so there’s no lock-in for customers.”
The startup’s consulting service also aims to attract local businesses, which often find it difficult to obtain the right infrastructure without spending thousands of dollars.
“A lot of times, customers come to us and say they want a lot of GPUs… and when we really look at the requirements, they don’t need half the amount they ordered,” Sanghi said.
Neysa has raised $30 million in an all-equity Series A round co-led by its existing investors NTVC, Z47 (formerly known as Matrix Partners India) and Nexus Venture Partners. This follows the startup’s $20 million seed round earlier this year.
Sanghi said the new financing will strengthen Neysa’s infrastructure, enhance research and development, and expand market reach. The funds will also form the basis for the startup to launch an integrated cloud service to accelerate Gen AI.
The startup currently employs 55 people, and will grow by adding more engineers and staff to expand direct and indirect sales.
Neysa currently has about a dozen paid customers and runs about six large proof-of-concept models. Up to 70 percent of its entire customer base has chosen the private suite, while the remaining 30 percent is on the public cloud, Sanghi said.
While Sanghi did not reveal the names of Neysa’s clients, he said the startup broadly caters to three categories: research institutes, AI startups, and enterprise clients, initially in the banking, manufacturing and media sectors.
Neysa’s current customer base is in India, though Sanghi said the startup is planning to enter global markets through its next round of funding — talks for which have already begun and are expected to close in the next six to nine months.
He did not reveal the exact amount Neysa is seeking to raise in her next round, although he stated that it would be “an order of magnitude larger than what we have currently raised.” The startup also plans to raise debt to meet its growing GPU requirements and other infrastructure requirements.
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