The journey of a Technologist, Marketer, and Entrepreneur in developing India's digital infrastructure

“Success is nothing but possessing dreams, setting goals and the discipline to chase those goals to the end,” says Nikhil Rathi from Mumbai, a man who dreamed of keeping India in the digital forefront and has conceived ideas and pursued them to success over the years. 

He began at an early age with USD 30 from his first customer only to have grown over the years constantly translating visions into realities. He now successfully heads four companies across multiple geographical locations and also includes an initiative that funds start-ups. He has established himself as a business catalyst, constantly steering his companies towards growth, thus gaining for them several accolades such a being the only Indian data center to feature on Cloudscene’s data center leader board, Best Brand of the Year Award 2019, Maharashtra IT Excellence Award, etc. He has also been pivotal in setting up India’s first internet exchange- IX which later merged with DE-CIX, the world’s largest internet exchange.

Nikhil is a technologist with vast experience in Unix, Windows, Networks and, programming. He also is an examiner with path-breaking ideas in the marketing world. His adventure began with the launch of his first software company way back in October 1996, which mainly focused on developing small-customized PC software solutions, booking domain names, web site designing, and hosting web sites on shared servers in the United States. The Internet today, is seamlessly accessible and is present everywhere. However, in the early days when he first met the Internet, it was different. India and the world at large were getting acquainted with the Internet, and businesses across sectors began adopting digital solutions, giving rise to massive amounts of data. This widened the need for hosting, securing, and managing data, and recognizing this, Nikhil transformed his hosting business into a data center business.

This led to the birth of Web Werks data centers and the first data center room was set up in Mumbai to cater to the Indian audience. Today, Web Werks has expanded to six geographical locations around the globe. The company recently launched a 200 crore, uptime certified data center in Delhi and is in the process of introducing data centers in Pune, Bangalore, and Chennai as well. Each Web Werks facility is now a high-density, hyper-scale, and artificial intelligence-powered infrastructure, offering best-in-class service support and uptime. Understanding the need for telecom carrier hotels in India, Nikhil adapted the European IX model to set up the first Commercial Internet Exchange- IX in India. In the last three decades, Web Werks has collaborated with more than 5000+ organizations globally that include Fortune 500 companies across various business verticals and Government sectors. Business surged and Nikhil diverted the software division to Neosoft Technologies, which has also expanded across geographies and comprises of around 2500 employees. Currently, while the country is in the pursuit of unlocking the potential of the rural sector, Web Werks now endeavours to set up edge data centers in Tier II and Tier III cities to harness and support India’s digital objectives. 

India proudly holds the position of being the second-largest telecommunications market in the world. And the growing internet penetration along with technological advancement increases the need for data centers. India is an underserved market but is now gaining prominence as a preferred location for data center expansion. This has been supported by Government policies and objectives, accelerating demands from cloud operators, high connectivity and data consumption due to the ripple effect of lockdowns caused by the pandemic driving demand for large network nodes and core data centers and the need for computing and storage with regards to artificial intelligence, big data, analytics, IoT and machine learning. The Internet is unbelievably widespread. The most exciting part of it is that it is tangible because at the end of the day it all comes down to a fiber line, a rack, a network point, a point of presence, an interconnection, an exchange- it’s the data center.  Nikhil’s deep understanding of the entire industry, strong technical background, keen business sense, and the clear vision of the future of the industry has always helped to ensure Web Werks is prepared to face any situation it comes across and maintains its position as a leading data center in the country.