US-based data analytics firm Cloudera has partnered with India’s Krutrim, an AI venture founded by Ola’s co-founder Bhavish Aggarwal, to provide large-scale AI and data analytics solutions to Krutrim’s clients. The deal, announced at Cloudera’s EVOLVE25 conference in Singapore, will see the company’s data and AI stack powering critical workloads on Krutrim Cloud, starting with Ola and later expanding to its other enterprise customers.
Krutrim is building a vertically integrated cloud stack that includes compute, storage, data management, and foundational AI models, optimized for India’s diverse linguistic context. With Cloudera, it now aims to deliver scalable data lake and AI services to its enterprise clients. A data lake is a centralized repository to store large amounts of raw, unprocessed data from various sources.
“This strategic partnership will enable Krutrim to harness the full potential of data and AI to drive business transformation, improve customer experience, and support the development of advanced data engineering, AI Training, and inference at scale,” the companies said in a statement.
Real-World Application: Powering Ola and Beyond
Ola is already using the integrated stack for real-time data processing and AI-driven insights. Using Cloudera’s platform and services, Kutrim has developed solutions to process large-scale datasets in real-time from a variety of data sources, enabling faster and accurate intelligence for Ola.
“We are focused on building India’s cloud with deep integrated capabilities across infrastructure, data, and AI to better serve the unique needs of the Indian market,” said Navendu Agarwal, Senior Vice President and Head of Business, Krutrim.
The deal also bolsters Cloudera’s footprint in the region and aligns with Krutrim’s efforts to offer a sovereign cloud alternative for Indian enterprises.
Addressing Security Concerns with Private AI
In a separate announcement, Cloudera also launched private AI capabilities on its platform that will enable enterprises to run generative AI workloads within their own data centers, located in the company premises.
The on-premise version of Cloudera’s AI Inference Service, which was previously cloud-only, will allow enterprises to build, deploy, and scale GenAI applications behind their firewall. An Accenture report cited by Cloudera found that 77% of organizations lack the foundational data and AI security practices needed to safeguard critical models, data pipelines, and cloud infrastructure.
“Today, the urgency to adopt AI is undeniable, but so are the concerns around data security. What enterprises need are solutions that streamline AI adoption, boost productivity, and do so without compromising on security,” said Sanjeev Mohan, industry analyst, in the company statement.
(The correspondent is in Singapore at the invitation of Cloudera)