AWS India appoints Sriram Santhanam to lead startup biz

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced the appointment of Sriram Santhanam as head of startup business for India.

In a release, Amazon's cloud computing arm said the latest appointment reinforces its commitment to deepening engagement with India's fast-growing startup ecosystem.

Startups, AWS said, are increasingly leveraging cloud and AI to accelerate growth and unlock global competitiveness.

In this role, Santhanam will drive AWS' strategy for startups across India, with a focus on innovation, accelerating cloud adoption, and strengthening collaboration with founders and venture-backed companies.

"His mandate includes guiding startups on architectural excellence, go-to-market enablement, and transforming ideas into commercially successful, long-term ventures," the AWS release said.

Santhanam brings over 25 years of experience in business-to-business sales leadership and has worked across industries and business models.

Over the past four years at AWS, he has led the expansion of the Independent Software Vendor (ISV) business, managing one of the largest portfolios and driving growth across horizontal and vertical SaaS (software as a service) businesses, AWS said.

"His expertise in cloud transformation and SaaS innovation will be central to AWS's efforts to advance startup engagement in India, helping companies navigate the complete lifecycle, from platform resilience and security to scaling go-to-market strategies," according to AWS.

India's startup ecosystem is counted among the most dynamic in the world, and is home to more than 1,57,000 DPIIT-recognised firms and over 123 unicorns across diverse sectors, making it the third-largest globally.

"With cloud, AI, and SaaS-led innovations driving the next phase of digital growth, AWS is focused on empowering startups to scale faster, innovate at speed, and view AWS as a strategic partner in their journey," the release added.