Cloud storage: Storage becomes quick, secure and easy on the pocket

By Srinath Srinivasan

Gurgaon-based DigiBoxx wants to wrest away the cloud storage market from the multinational giants, who currently rule this market in India. As a first step, the bootstrapped startup has launched a made-in-India platform to store user data within Indian borders for as cheap as 1GB/Rupee/day. One of its basic paid plans for an individual user starts at Rs 30/month for 30GB and the entry level free plan on the platform offers 20GB of free storage, 5GB more than what some of the dominant tech players offer today.

DigiBoxx is promoted by Arnab Mitra, Ashish Jalan and Vivek Suchanti. “We want to reach the deep end in the Indian market, across all levels and regions. Now that smartphones are common and users use email services, storage is essential. That is the idea behind making DigiBoxx in India and eventually pricing it competitively,” says Mitra, CEO, DigiBoxx. According to him, the platform is optimised for all kinds of devices that have access to internet and across all bandwidths present in different parts of the country.

Apart from having economical plans for businesses, DigiBoxx customises the platform for on-premise storage of data within an organisation. “Since we use latest in technology it is easy to integrate with on premise servers that serve exclusively to the organisation,” he says. To provide services to other organisations wanting storage but not on-premise, DigiBoxx has partnered with a number of datacentres across the country. As a result, the data is stored within Indian borders and can be accessed by employees who are working in the foreign branches of an organisation. “Right now, the demand for foreign storage is not big for us to venture there but we will be watching the market closely,” he says. “Offering local storage increases trust among users. We have services in eight major Indian languages and being Indian ourselves, we figured out specific requirements of Indian users.”

One such usage is integration with Gmail and providing transfer links which are valid for 45 days instead of seven days as provided by other services. “Once you start using the platform, you will know the experience is tailored for Indians,” he says.

The startup has received endorsement from Niti Aayog, which launched the platform on the lines of ‘Go vocal for local’. At the moment, Mitra feels that that there is a challenge in attracting the right talent and so focusing on it will also be a priority as much as expansion within Indian market is one. “There is always a demand for the right talent and large established companies get the best talent easily. And as a new company we have to develop an understanding in them that we are making an impact. That will be our focus as well,” he adds.