Utho Cloud bets on sovereignty, cost savings to win India’s cloud market
Can a homegrown challenger shake up India’s cloud industry, dominated by AWS and Azure? Manoj Dhanda, Founder and CEO of Utho Cloud, believes there’s a huge demand for it.
For years, Indian enterprises have depended on global cloud giants like AWS and Azure, but high costs, compliance hurdles, and data sovereignty concerns have made them less than ideal. Utho Cloud steps into this gap with a homegrown alternative and claims to cut costs by over half, offers direct human support, and keeps data within India’s borders.
“People often think that moving away from AWS or Azure is impossible,” says Manoj Dhanda, Founder and CEO of Utho Cloud. “But with the right architecture, customers shifted, saving up to 70% and gaining the confidence of hosting with an Indian company.”
From Noida to building India’s own cloud
Dhanda, a college dropout, ventured into entrepreneurship at a young age. In 2010, he launched Microhost, a brand offering basic website-building and hosting services. But as India’s digital ecosystem rapidly expanded, he realised the country needed something bigger and more scalable than simple hosting solutions.
“In 2016, I saw people looking for cloud services in India, but there was no homegrown option,” Dhanda tells YourStory. The choice was either to resell AWS and Azure or to build something from scratch. “I felt that reselling wouldn’t add real value. So, I decided to build.”
Two years later, in February 2018, he launched Utho Cloud, which was born out of Microhost’s evolution. His wife, Kusum Dhanda, joined as co-founder and oversees the company’s internal operations. From the beginning, the team decided to own the entire stack, developing their own orchestration layer and infrastructure. “It was a zero-to-hero journey,” Dhanda says.
The company changed its name from MicroHost to Utho because the founder says the old name didn’t show its bigger mission. Utho, which means “to rise” in Hindi, was chosen to reflect how the company helps businesses rise above high costs, hidden fees, and dependence on foreign clouds.
What Utho does differently
At its core, Utho is a full-fledged cloud platform, offering compute, storage, Kubernetes, load balancing, firewalls, and migration tools. Its promise lies in three things: cost efficiency, flexibility, and personalised support.
The company claims that it reduces costs for customers by 60-70%. “Unlike hyperscalers, our customers can directly connect with our engineering teams over WhatsApp or Slack. That kind of human support is something AWS can’t provide,” Dhanda says.
Utho enables dedicated clusters for those who want private setups. The platform also integrates a self-service model: startups and enterprises can sign up online, add payment details, and start building infrastructure immediately. For migration, Utho offers lift-and-shift tools, which make it possible to move workloads from AWS to Utho with minimal friction.
Riding the wave of cloud telephony
One of Utho’s defining moments came during the pandemic, when demand for cloud telephony surged as call centres shifted away from physical infrastructure. “Almost 70-80% of India’s telephony calls run on our infrastructure today,” Dhanda says. “Out of the top 10 players in the space, six or seven host with us.”
This early success gave Utho the credibility to expand beyond telephony into full-scale hyperscale infrastructure.
Technology and AI adoption
Though Utho was founded before the AI boom, it started integrating AI into its infrastructure management in January this year. “We now use AI to predict when a machine might fail and automatically move workloads before downtime occurs,” Dhanda says.
By focusing on the 20% of cloud products that serve 80% of the market, Utho avoids the sprawl of 400-500 services offered by hyperscalers. “We don’t try to be everything for everyone,” he says. “We focus on compute, storage, and bandwidth- the areas where customers can save the most.”
Building the team and expanding globally
Utho operates on a B2B2C model and also serves around 3,500 B2B clients, including the India Medical Association, Ajnara, FITJEE, Direct2Pay, 360 Degree Cloud, and CallHippo. The startup’s first enterprise client was Drishti Soft, and today, Utho has nearly 25,000 active users.
The startup saw a growing demand after launch. In fact, when Utho rolled out its initial campaign, the marketing engine brought in nearly 500-600 users within just two hours, the founder says.
The company follows a flexible revenue model. Customers can choose between pay-as-you-go billing, where they can pay based on actual usage of compute, storage, and other services, with no hidden fees, or they can choose monthly, quarterly, or annual plans. Large enterprises can also use the pay-as-you-go model to save on development and testing costs by shutting down idle infrastructure at night. Security features like WAF are included at no extra cost, and migration is free.
In FY23, Utho recorded revenue of around Rs 15 crore; the founder says the company is growing at 40-45% every year. Utho has achieved this as a bootstrapped venture. “We are not looking for any funds as of now,” Dhanda says.
From just 25 employees a year ago, Utho has scaled to 75 team members across India. Its headquarters is in Gurugram, but it also operates from Noida, with engineers stationed in data centres across Bengaluru, Mumbai, and other cities.
The company is now eyeing expansion abroad. A US office is already in the works, and new data centres are being set up in Dallas, Frankfurt, and Dubai this year. “Customers outside India want local data centres to reduce latency. It’s mandatory if we want to serve them well,” Dhanda says.
Challenges and competing in a market of giants
According to the Grand View Horizon report, the global cloud computing market was estimated at $752 billion in 2024 and is projected to more than triple, reaching approximately $2.39 trillion by 2030, driven by a robust compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 20.4%.
“In India, 80% of the market is still with AWS and Azure,” Dhanda says. “We’re currently at about 3%, but with our architecture in place, I’m confident we’ll grow to Rs 200–250 crore in the next three years.”
Dhanda doesn’t see Indian players as competitors. “Other platforms can offer virtual machines, but they don’t have the architecture to seamlessly bring AWS customers onto an Indian cloud. That’s what sets us apart.”
According to the founder, the biggest challenge is convincing enterprises to leave the safety net of global providers. “I personally interviewed more than 100 industry leaders to understand why they weren’t moving away from AWS,” Dhanda says, adding, “Building the right architecture took years of day and night effort. But now, customers are switching.”
The road ahead
Looking forward, Utho plans to strengthen its government and PSU partnerships, while continuing to attract enterprises seeking a sovereign cloud. The company is also pushing for MeitY certification, which will open doors to sensitive sectors.
“The global situation makes it clear that India needs its own sovereign cloud,” Dhanda says. “We’ve already shown that it’s possible to compete with the giants. Now, the challenge is to scale.”