Data integration, analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) services provider Qlik has announced the launch of its new cloud region in India. Located in Mumbai, the cloud is an effort towards serving the growing demand for local data storage, regulatory compliance, and advanced AI capabilities, the Pennsylvania-headquartered company said.
“Our cloud is based out of (uses) the AWS cloud. We wanted to work in a way that our capabilities align with the capabilities they offer. A complete set of the desired capabilities with AWS was available in Mumbai, which allowed us to bring all our AI capabilities to our Indian customers,” Varun Babbar, managing director – India & SAARC, Qlik, said stating why Mumbai was selected as the cloud region.
AWS has two cloud regions in the country – one in Mumbai, and another in Hyderabad.
The new cloud will cater to the rising demand for sovereign cloud services in the country as more enterprises look for data localisation and more public sector enterprises digitalise, in addition to existing and proposed regulations around data residency.
A sovereign cloud is a cloud computing environment that stores data within a country’s borders and is governed by its laws.
“We want to make sure that there’s no impediment for us in doing business here. So, it’s not like we said the sovereign cloud is going to get us this much more business. It will ease friction in terms of our growth ambition. And our growth ambition is to roughly double the size of the India business, at least our new sales every couple of years,” Mike Capone, chief executive officer, Qlik said.
While he refused to give India’s current contribution to global sales, he said it is among the top growing markets and the country would become one of the top markets for the firm in the next three years.
In India, Qlik currently works with enterprises like Indian Oil and Mahindra. Going forward, it is also looking to expand the base of public sector clients.
Public sector enterprises have contributed significantly to Qlik’s India business over the past two years. Apart from banking, the company is in talks with ministries like railways and finance for projects.
“Overall, the public sector business is very healthy for us. We’ve almost doubled our (India) business over the last two years, and public sector has been a significant contributor to that. It remains the biggest area of investment for us going forward,” Babbar said.
Defence is another area that Qlik’s India unit will focus on. The firm is already talking to defence organisations and security agencies on aspects like establishing the right data foundation.
