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july 4 -17, 2016
Busi n e ss i n di a u the m aga zi n e of the cor por ate wor ld Infotech
ctrls datacenters offers the highest level of security and a penalty-backed service-level
agreement (sla) that provides as much as 99.995 per cent uptime, says one of its premier clients, dbs Bank. the hyderabad-headquartered com-pany is also at the top of the league as it is the only tier-4 datacentre in india, points out narayan samant, senior vice-president & head, tech-nology, dbs Bank. “our bank has been recognised as the safest in asia by (the new york-headquartered mag-azine) Global Finance,” adds samant. “we came across ctrls in our search for a datacentre that can host our servers with the level of commitment we require.”
other banks, which need high-se-curity storage for their financial and client data, including india’s biggest – state Bank of india (sbi) – are also clients, as are large corporate entities like mining and metals major Vedan-ta’s subsidiary sterlite industries and a slew of insurance, automotive, logistics, pharmaceutical and other companies. sridhar pinnapureddy, founder & chief executive offi-cer, ctrls, began his entrepreneur-ial journey ‘in a small way’ in 1992, while he was still in college. with his first formal firm pioneer software
technologies, set up three years later, he worked extensively with c-dac, the sam pitroda-led centre for devel-opment of advanced computing. after another venture, pioneeron-line, he found that getting into data-centres was “a natural extension of having been in it for so long”.
Commitment towards workthat business was, however, still in its infancy in india and began to become profitable only in 2008 when the economy began to open up. But, though the industry was 30-40 per cent behind that in developed coun-tries, pinnapureddy saw the com-ing growth and new technologies which would need huge datacen-tre space. almost on schedule, ctrls began working with the top 30 com-panies, primarily for domestic data storage. more than half of these were overseas clients. “in 2006, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies asked us to set up a data-centre for them in india,” he recalls. “we built it, and gained more insight and learning from the client. that datacentre has been running with 100 per cent uptime, because our slas are strict.” the fact that this has been a record for the 1,600-plus days, says dbs Bank’s samant, “speaks
volumes about ctrls’s commitment towards work”.
with his company up and run-ning, with a valuation of R500 crore and a turnover of R100 crore, pin-napureddy was confident back then of doubling both these over two years. “those plans have materia-lised, though there have been major changes in execution,” he says. “we are now the undisputed leader in the
high-end datacentre space, and have a presence in all the
major cities with bigger and better facilities for our cli-ents. our people strength has grown from 50 eight
years ago to 700, and we’ll cross 1,000 this year. and
our client list includes 10 of the global fortune 100 companies and 30 of india’s top 100, including the leaders of almost all the verticals.”
over the years, ctrls has also worked successfully on energy con-servation, and claims to be 20 per cent more efficient than its least-cost competitor. yes, there is com-petition: from the biggest of them of all, ibm to tata communica-tions, reliance and airtel. the com-pany also has over 200 innovations to its credit, more than 20 of which have won national awards including the cii green Building council’s. its founder’s only regret is that it is ‘not yet there’ in being adjudged among the ‘best places to work’.
for now, however, he contin-ues to concentrate on growth: with operations in mumbai, delhi, Beng-aluru and chennai besides hydera-bad, ctrls is building bigger and bigger datacentres: against the indus-try norm of between 15,000 and 30,000 sq ft, its biggest yet is the one at mhape in navi mumbai, which is all of 150,000 sq ft. “it’s the larg-est in the asia-pacific region – all of sbi could fit into half the area,” pin-napureddy says. “it will take a while to fill up, because ours is a niche, slow business. But we need to plan for 10-15 years.” after that, of course, he’ll have to build bigger ones to cater to his customers’ increasing need for increased security.
u s e K h a r s e s h a n
safe storage
Commitment to security and close to 100 per cent uptime make CtrlS D a partner of choice
Pinnapureddy has an eye firmly
on the future
