How OVHcloud Is Reshaping Its Sales Playbook For India’s Demanding Cloud Market

India’s digital economy, which made up nearly 12 percent of the national GDP in 2023, is going full throttle to reach $1 Tn by 2029, driving the country’s $4.2 Tn economy on course to hover on $9 Tn and secure the third spot in global ranking. 

Powering this growth with both speed and scale demands an infrastructure that is efficient, secure, cost-effective, and compliant. That’s where cloud solution providers like OVHcloud become increasingly relevant. And, what has become the lifeblood for businesses in this tech age is data – something akin to gold. 

But the gold mine becomes a minefield, by all means, when the guardrails are lowered.  

“We offer our customers full control over where their data is stored, with the highest standards of protection and a firm commitment to never selling, using or transferring their data,” says Caroline Comet-Fraigneau, chief sales officer of OVHcloud.

The France-based cloud provider offers dedicated servers, and public and private cloud services to over 1.6 Mn customers around the world. “We are the leading European cloud provider with a global presence – dedicated to bringing secure, trusted, open and sustainable cloud solutions to everyone,” says its website. 

In the first half of FY25, OVHcloud reported a 10.3% surge in revenue to €536 Mn (about INR 5,125.23 Cr) from €486 Mn (around  INR 4,647 Cr) a year back and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 40.0%, according to the financial statements available on its website.

In sync with India’s booming digital economy, OVHcloud has tailored its sales strategies to match the scale, speed, and sensitivity. In an exclusive interaction with Inc42, Comet-Fraigneau explains how the company is aligning its technology, services, and costs to build its presence in India.

Here are edited excerpts from the interview:

Inc42: How do you create a universal cloud value proposition that resonates across different market contexts and tech ecosystems?

Caroline Comet-Fraigneau: Secure, forward-thinking, affordable and sustainable cloud can enable freedom for a business and we deliver that to our customers. Be it Asia Pacific, Europe or the US, OVHcloud works on four key principles of trust, innovation, performance and sustainability. 

Trust and transparency: Our customers have full control and transparency over how and where their data is being stored and processed. We follow stringent compliance norms with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which ensures that our customers need not be subjected to extraterritorial laws and our security certifications, such as the SecNumCloud label by the French National Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI), demonstrate that our cloud fulfils the highest standards of security in Europe. We also have Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) certification, which means that our cloud meets strict standards for handling payments-related data, which is of huge importance in India, given the spiralling popularity of digital payments. 

It also includes ISO standards that cover everything from managing information security (ISO 27001) to cloud-specific protections (ISO 27017 and 27018), and privacy management (ISO 27701). 

We also have the CSA STAR certification, which underlines our commitment to transparency and best practices in cloud services. Others, like HDS (for health data in Europe) and ENS (Spain’s national security scheme), show compliance with local regulations in Europe.

Innovation: We democratise technologies on our infrastructure to bring the best solutions to our customers. Our innovation is tailored to specific needs, industries or verticals, and our open-source approach guarantees full transparency of the technological building blocks.

Performance-price ratio: We innovate at scale to offer the best performance-price ratio in the industry. We put up the latest-generation chipsets, provide high network quality with low latency and low packet loss, yet accord fair and optimised prices.

Sustainable design: We have been pioneering a sustainable cloud for more than 20 years. By developing our proprietary watercooling technology and deploying it at scale in our data centres worldwide, manufacturing our own servers and reusing them with a circular approach in a fully controlled value chain, and providing a carbon calculator, we reduce the carbon footprint for our customers, giving them the option of calculating their carbon emissions and making more informed decisions.

Inc42: How are emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing reshaping your approach to cloud sales strategies?

Caroline Comet-Fraigneau: Cloud infrastructure is crucial in emerging technologies like AI and quantum computing. For us, AI is a major focus. We cater to a wide range of users — from those who need infrastructure to train and deploy their own models to those who want ready-to-use AI tools. This includes APIs for generative AI and machine learning (ML) solutions for data scientists.

We just launched AI Endpoints globally as a serverless platform that requires no AI expertise or special infrastructure. It offers a selection of pre-trained models that developers can plug directly into their apps. These include models for language, speech, image recognition, translation and so on. It supports popular open-source models like Mistral, Llama, DeepSeek and Stable Diffusion, and gives developers a space to test and compare them with ease.

Another key thing is that as a pure cloud provider, we do not compete with our customers. We also do not use any customer data to train our AI models or optimise algorithms.

As for quantum computing, we are focussed on building an ecosystem to support a community that will shape future quantum solutions and help deliver its benefits to customers. Both AI and quantum are changing how we think about the cloud, and we are aligning our strategy to stay ahead.

Inc42: Please tell us about your approach to create multi-tiered revenue streams that adapt to rapidly changing tech landscapes.

Caroline Comet-Fraigneau: We have built a strategy that focuses on specific industries while also catering to different types of customers. 

We work across a range of sectors from finance and healthcare to gaming, blockchain and Web3, and customise our cloud solutions to meet the unique regulatory and operational needs of each of our clients. Whether it is secure data hosting for governments or solutions for sensitive data in private sectors, we design our solutions to stay relevant and useful across all landscapes.

To make this sustainable, we have created a flexible go-to-market model. Large enterprises get customised support through our dedicated sales and pre-sales teams, helping them design the right cloud set-up for their operations. At the same time, we support digital-native businesses with a seamless online buying experience in local currencies, so they can get started quickly. 

Our partner programme also helps resellers and managed service providers create unique offerings on top of our platform. For startups, we offer a structured support programme that includes free cloud credits and technical help to get them off the ground. This layered approach lets us build multiple revenue streams that adapt to how businesses are evolving.

Inc42: Coming on to the Indian tech ecosystem, what kind of opportunities and challenges do you see here? 

Caroline Comet-Fraigneau: India is a significant player in the global crypto market and Grant Thornton Bharat predicts that it would surpass $15 Bn in 2035 from $2.5 Bn last year at an average growth rate of 18.5%. 

With the government supporting blockchain technology and its potential applications, particularly in areas like financial services and digital payments, we see many opportunities for our blockchain vertical. Developing blockchain solutions comes with many challenges, too, including performance and security, connectivity and interoperability of products and services, and future regulatory requirements. 

Our solutions help scale the business while preserving the efficiency, profitability and compliance of our customers’ blockchain projects. In fact, OVHcloud is one of the top three cloud providers that the blockchain community depends on for node infrastructure.

Again, India is one of the fastest-growing markets for data centres, with investment commitments in the segment expected to exceed $100 Bn by 2027, as per CBRE. However, such robust growth also comes with a high environmental impact. Sustainability has emerged as a critical issue in the development of data centres in India. Power, water and carbon usage are all critical metrics in assessing the efficiency of data centres. 

Innovative cooling technology, optimising data centre energy consumption and reducing IT component waste are different ways industry players can deploy to build greener data centres. Take our proprietary water cooling technology for example, we pioneered it more than 20 years ago and have been deploying it at scale across our data centres. Through our continuing sustainability efforts, our power usage effectiveness now stands at 1.26 while our water usage effectiveness is 0.37 L/kWh, significantly lower than industry standards.

Inc42: What type of companies in India are most actively engaging with your cloud solutions? What defines their approach to cloud adoption?

Caroline Comet-Fraigneau: In India, we see a strong growth from companies working in blockchain and AI, especially in the fintech space. Many are using blockchain for secure digital transactions and AI for things like fraud detection. These technologies need a cloud setup that can handle millions of transactions quickly and safely, while also meeting local rules around data storage and privacy.

To stay compliant and secure, many of these businesses are turning to cloud environments that support data residency, including sovereign cloud options, and offer the flexibility of hybrid or multi-cloud setups. This gives them the freedom to balance cost, performance and reliability, while staying within the limits of industry regulations.

Another big reason companies choose the cloud is scalability. They can increase or reduce their computing power whenever they need it, without overspending. And for those looking to expand outside India, our global network is a big advantage. 

We have 43 data centres spread across four continents — Asia, Europe, Australia, and North America — giving customers the choice of where they want their data to be hosted. This global reach helps Indian companies grow internationally while staying connected to secure, reliable infrastructure.

Inc42: How does your pricing strategy for the Indian market differ from your global approach? What are your plans for India?

Caroline Comet-Fraigneau: India is a price-sensitive market, but it also expects strong performance and advanced technology. Our approach here reflects that balance. We focus on offering high-performance cloud solutions while keeping the costs optimised. Thanks to an efficient and integrated supply chain, we’re able to keep our pricing highly competitive without compromising on quality. This gives Indian businesses access to powerful cloud infrastructure at a price that makes sense for them.

India is a key growth market for us, and we’re committed to expanding here. It is one of the fastest-growing markets for data centres, with investment commitments in the segment likely to exceed $100 Bn by 2027, according to a CBRE report. 

We have a data centre in Mumbai and an office in Bangalore, where our local team includes cloud architects, sales professionals, customer support, and technical experts. This team plays a central role in serving local customers and helping us understand and respond to the unique needs of Indian businesses. 

We’re continuing to invest in expanding these operations not just through infrastructure, but also by growing our teams and increasing our sales and marketing efforts across the country. India’s digital growth is fast-paced, and we want to be a long-term partner in that journey.