In a one-to-one conversation with WebHosting.Info, Prabhakar Jayakumar, Country Director, India at DigitalOcean, talks about the growth he has seen across the Indian and Global cloud markets. He further deep dives into the approach DigitalOcean have taken to market their products among the developer
Here is the full interview:
1. How do you see the growth of the Indian cloud market this year vis-a-vis the previous year?
As far as the Indian market is concerned, the cloud has enabled developers and entrepreneurs to quickly build, test and deploy their innovative applications and products. The faster the build-test-deploy lifecycles are, the easier it is for them to iterate the idea or concept before building a full-fledged product.
Also, with the cost of cloud infrastructure lower than traditional on-premise infrastructure, the barriers to entry are constantly being lowered for startups and developers, in order to enable them to scale their business quickly.
As far as India is concerned, it is one of the fastest growing ecosystems of startups and entrepreneurs. With the number of software developers across India expected to grow in the next couple of years, India is poised to become the largest developer markets in the world. As an extension, I anticipate the cloud market to continue growing exponentially in the year(s) ahead.
2. Digital Ocean has products that require customers to really know what they need. Do you think customers are really aware of their needs? How much of a need-awareness gap do you see in the Indian market?
As an organization, we care deeply about building for the needs of developers. We have removed the complexities of infrastructure by providing a simple control panel and API so teams can spend more time building better software for their customers.
The focus is to build a true community of developers and help them build products of the future. To facilitate the same, on our community site, you can see extensive tutorials for developers that guide them when it comes to learning to work with Linux and creating complex setups within their infrastructure.
So, to put it in a nutshell, the value proposition of simplicity, transparent pricing and robust performance that we deliver, resonates with the Indian developer as much as it does for their counterparts in other parts of the globe. Which is why India is the fastest growing international market for us.
3. How different is India as a market from other markets? Can you talk about the approach you take in terms of marketing your products in the U.S. market and the Indian market?
India’s cloud ecosystem is at par with services that are available anywhere else in the world. The requirements of developers & startups are the same universally – they care about a cloud platform that’s simple, performant, feature-rich and easy on the pocket.
As a company, our marketing efforts are focused on collaborating and contributing to developer communities around the world. In the same spirit, we have driven several activities ranging from workshops, hackathons, coding contests, webinars and conferences to engage with the developer community in India.
When it comes to global marketing, we have Hatch, a startup program designed to support businesses as they launch and scale worldwide. This includes access to DigitalOcean’s cloud for 12 months, technical training, mentorship, priority support, and an opportunity to connect with other startups, accelerators, and investors.
As part of Hatch, we have forged partnerships with key players in the ecosystem to support startups in their portfolios (including top-tier accelerators such as NUMA, incubators such as Nasscom 10K startups, VCs such as Accel, SAIF Partners and government-run initiatives such as the Startup India program).
If you have enjoyed reading the interview, you can read more about DigitalOcean’s partnership with Engineer.ai to build cloud applications.