The progress of Indian data centres in catching up to global standards has been truly remarkable

In 2018, Utho launched India’s first homegrown public cloud to offer businesses a reliable and affordable alternative to global giants like AWS, Azure, and GCP.

Headquartered in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, the company serves as the core centre for operations, leadership, and innovation. Unlike global players, the organization is proudly Indian and sharply attuned to the needs of domestic enterprises, positioning itself as “Bharat’s Cloud.”

Utho operates on a B2B, B2E, and B2G business model, offering flexible subscription plans monthly, quarterly, and annually. The company has strategically placed data centre operations in Noida, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Indore, Los Angeles, and Frankfurt.

In an exclusive interview to Bizz Buzz, Manoj Dhanda, Founder and CEO of Utho, said: “While people assume that moving away from foreign hyperscalers is difficult, but our architecture has enabled customers to transition smoothly, achieving up to 60–70% cost savings and building trust in hosting with an Indian cloud company.”

The pace of digitisation in India has skyrocketed in the last few years. How do you see this shift impacting the overall cloud and data security landscape?

The swift digital transformation in India has significantly transformed the landscape of cloud and data security while preserving trust. With every business and startup turning digital, they generate new data, points of access, and vulnerabilities, thus increasing the importance of strong protection.

Indian businesses are particularly benefiting as security is increasingly viewed not just as a compliance issue but as an enabler of innovation through strategy. The emphasis is thus moving away from responding to threats after they have struck towards predictive, automated security that can catch threats before they happen.

This shift in thinking is vital, as it sets the stage for cloud infrastructure in India that is completely integrated and sovereign, with a safe platform for innovation and digital growth that is sustainable.

As more data moves online, what are the biggest gaps you still observe in the Indian cloud security ecosystem?

The largest gap that exists in India's cloud security ecosystem is between awareness and action. Most companies understand the importance of security, but they often fail to invest in a robust architecture until it’s too late, when a breach occurs.

Proper security is not adding a ton of tools but rather a single strategy that incorporates them in harmony. The other huge chasm is visibility. Companies have multiple vendors and platforms, but don't have an integrated view of their whole infrastructure.

Without end-to-end visibility, complete protection is not possible. At Utho, we solve this by creating systems that enable complete transparency and control so that businesses not only achieve high performance but also have the confidence and peace of mind to navigate the world of the digital.

Utho entered the market as a homegrown cloud solutions provider. What was the core idea or market gap that led to the brand’s inception?

The core idea behind Utho was straightforward, as India needed a cloud platform that truly understood the unique needs of its businesses. We identified a significant gap between affordability and reliability as global providers offered powerful solutions but were often misaligned with India’s market dynamics, pricing expectations, support needs, and compliance requirements.

Utho was envisioned as a platform that delivers global-grade performance while catering specifically to Indian enterprises, startups, and developers. Our mission is to provide high-performance, secure, and cost-effective cloud solutions that remove complexity and reduce cost burdens, empowering businesses to innovate confidently without compromising on quality or compliance.

When you launched, global players already dominated the market. How did Utho carve its own space in such a competitive environment?

Utho carved its space not by competing on scale, but by addressing real, everyday pain points that global players often overlooked. While international providers were powerful, they were rigid and impersonal.

We built flexibility into every layer of our platform, customized billing, local support, and developer-friendly interfaces, ensuring the experience was intuitive and human-centric.

Our true advantage came from being close to our customers, understanding their challenges in real time, and adapting faster than larger players could.

By focusing on speed, empathy, and India-specific solutions, Utho didn’t just enter the market as it redefined what a “cloud made for India” could be, earning trust and loyalty along the way.

With rising ransomware incidents and accidental data losses, how prepared do you think Indian cloud providers are for large-scale recovery?

Indian cloud providers have made notable strides in handling data loss and ransomware, but large-scale recovery still requires greater advancement. While many have backup infrastructure, the true challenge lies in orchestration, recovering quickly, and resuming operations seamlessly.

At Utho, we’ve built recovery systems that are intelligent and automated: anomalies are detected in real time, replication is triggered instantly, and workloads fail over to alternate zones without disruption. Moving from manual intervention to autonomous recovery is the next frontier for the industry.

This approach ensures minimal downtime, robust data protection, and uninterrupted business continuity, setting a benchmark for what Indian cloud resilience should look like in today’s threat landscape.

How does Utho’s disaster recovery infrastructure differ or stand out in this context?

Utho’s disaster recovery is integral, not optional, as it’s embedded into the platform from the ground up. Every workload benefits from multi-zone redundancy, with continuous monitoring that validates failover paths in real time. This ensures that resilience isn’t just about having backups but about maintaining uninterrupted operations.

What truly sets us apart is our self-healing capability: the system detects anomalies such as spikes in latency or unusual data access and automatically reallocates resources before any disruption reaches the customer.

By being proactive rather than reactive, Utho delivers a level of reliability and operational continuity that goes beyond traditional disaster recovery, giving businesses confidence and peace of mind.

What role do homegrown players like Utho play in ensuring India’s data stays within its borders, both technically and legally?

Homegrown players are the custodians of India’s digital trust. Beyond simply hosting data locally, they bring a deep understanding of national laws, infrastructure, and compliance frameworks, making true data sovereignty both practical and actionable.

At Utho, all data storage, processing, and redundancy remain strictly within Indian borders. Additionally, we work closely with government bodies and enterprises to establish best practices for compliance, security, and transparency.

Our role goes beyond business; it’s about contributing to a secure, resilient, and self-reliant digital ecosystem where India’s data remains protected and governed on its own terms.

“Security begins with the right infrastructure.” What does that mean in practical terms for cloud players today?

Security begins with the right infrastructure, which means that protection cannot be an afterthought; it must be embedded from the beginning. Every layer, from virtualization to networking, should have built-in isolation, monitoring, and encryption by default.

Infrastructure acts like a building’s foundation: if it’s weak, no patch or solution can fully secure it. At Utho, we’ve built our platform on zero-trust principles and strict access controls, ensuring every action, connection, and byte is traceable.

This approach exemplifies practical, infrastructure-led security where resilience, accountability, and protection are intrinsic, not added on, enabling businesses to operate safely in an increasingly complex cloud environment.

Are Indian data centres truly ready to handle global standards of redundancy, uptime, and compliance?

Indian data centers are rapidly catching up to global standards, and the progress has been remarkable. Just five years ago, achieving high redundancy and uptime was a major challenge; today, these are becoming baseline expectations.

Investments in tier certifications, compliance frameworks, and energy efficiency have accelerated the transformation. However, infrastructure alone isn’t enough because true reliability comes from disciplined operations and a strong culture.

At Utho, we focus on both building world-class hardware and fostering the people, processes, and practices that ensure consistent performance. This combination allows us to meet global benchmarks while delivering dependable, secure, and efficient cloud services to our customers.

Can you walk us through how Utho has built its infrastructure backbone to ensure reliability and protection for businesses of all sizes?

Utho’s infrastructure backbone is built on the principle of distributed intelligence. Our data centers are interconnected, continuously monitored, and designed for scalability and fault tolerance, with redundancy at every level from computer to network routing.

For protection, we layer multiple security measures, including network firewalls, AI-powered intrusion detection, and encryption both in transit and at rest. Reliability isn’t just about keeping systems online; it’s about giving businesses confidence.

When customers deploy on Utho, they can trust that their workloads are secure, optimized, and inherently resilient, ensuring smooth operations and peace of mind regardless of business size or scale.