Pure Storage, a global data flash storage solutions provider, expects India to contribute 5-6 per cent of global revenue in the next five years. Its Chairman and CEO Charles Giancarlo said, the company will move more product lines to India as its India centre grows.
Pure Storage’s revenue stood at $2.8 billion, up by 26 per cent year-on-year in fiscal year 2023. Giancarlo told businessline, “We plan for India to be a major sales region for us. Flash storage is considered relatively expensive, hence we have had limited opportunity so far, but as flash takes over the disk, more opportunities will be created.”
Data storage is a horizontal business and can fit into every industry and into all compute use cases and Pure Storage will be able to compete more effectively in the Indian market. Given India’s scale, the business here should reach 5-6 per cent of the world market in the next five years, which is a fairly strong contribution, he added.
Pure Storage’s customer base in India is growing and it now has clients across the BFSI, healthcare, telecom IT/ITes, PSU and manufacturing verticals.
Its team of over 200 people in India works on Flash Blade, a scale-out storage for modern workloads, and Portworx, a Kubernetes data service platform. The teams are also involved in platform engineering, product management, and go-to-market functions. Globally, it employs around 4,500 people and is headquartered in the US.
Giancarlo said, “Our Bengaluru centre has grown rapidly, its performance has allowed us to place greater responsibility and authority with the Indian team. It is not just an outsourcing destination, but has product ownership based on talent. We will move more functions to this geography as our employee strength continues to grow.”
Pure Storage will also be increasing its headcount to 500 people in the next year, as it had targeted earlier. Currently, non-US markets contribute 30 per cent of global sales, and is growing faster than overall sales. In a mature environment, it would expect the contribution of non-US markets to reach 55 per cent, according to the CEO.
Giancarlo believes that in five years, no disk will be sold and flash as an exciting new technology has a new future ahead of it. He said flash storage is driving down the cost curve constantly as it operates at one-tenth the space, power, and labour.