In May, while unveiling the newest iPad at an Apple event, CEO Tim Cook wore a custom-made, one-of-a-kind pair of Nike sneakers whose decorative stitching included the words “Made on iPad.”

It wasn’t just an Apple and Nike collaboration. As Bloomberg reminds readersCook has served on Nike’s board since 2005, when Cook was still second banana at Apple under Steve Jobs and the iPhone didn’t exist yet.

It’s an even bigger commitment than some people can imagine. According to Bloomberg, Cook isn’t only Nike’s lead independent director and chairman of its compensation committee, but in a needed change at Nike now, he helped herald former Nike CEO Elliott Hill as the corporate’s newest CEO.

Hill, who began as an intern at Nike and retired in 2020, returned last week to exchange former eBay CEO John Donahoe, whom Cook had previously beneficial for the highest job. Facing slowing growth in China and other challenges, Donahoe stayed within the job for just 4 years.

While India shouldn’t be on the forefront of the global AI innovation battle, demand for AI within the country is growing as enterprises seek efficiencies and tech corporations promote the event of AI as a cure-all. This South Asian country is anticipated to have a synthetic intelligence market to USD 17 billion by 2027– according to a joint report by the IT industry organization Nasscom and the consulting company BCG.

Neysaan Indian start-up led by experienced technology entrepreneur Sharad Sanghi intends to capitalize on this growth opportunity by offering its artificial intelligence solutions to local and international corporations within the country.

The Mumbai-based startup provides AI and machine learning infrastructure and platform as a service to enterprise clients based on their requirements. It also includes dedicated machine learning operations and infrastructure consulting teams that help customers find the precise size for his or her infrastructure and tune or adapt the models they select.

Before founding Neysa with his former colleague Anindya Das in 2023, Sanghi spent greater than 27 years at his previous enterprise and data center provider, Netmagic, which was acquired by Japanese company NTT Data in 2016. He told TechCrunch that he intended to give attention to cloud infrastructure and artificial intelligence in 2022, but this was impossible. He resigned as managing director and CEO of Netmagic in June 2023 to start a brand new job at Neysa.

“I started at Neys with the idea of ​​providing infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, inference as a service, a service layer around ML, as well as the platforms we need for developers,” he said in an interview.

Neysa initially began as an infrastructure services provider and in July launched its flagship Velocis platform to provide on-demand access to computing infrastructure. However, it plans to expand its product range by launching a development platform and inference-as-a-service before the tip of the yr. The startup can also be working on developing “observability to better manage” its infrastructure and secure its AI workloads, Sanghi said.

Neysa goals to compete with global hyperscale corporations, including typical cloud service providers corresponding to AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure, in addition to new-age competitors corresponding to CoreWeave and Lambda Labs, in its full suite of offerings. Sanghi assured that the startup stands out from existing players by offering “flexibility” in its models.

“We can offer both public and private cloud clusters. This is also the open nature of our offer. All our platforms are built on open source platforms… so customers are not dependent,” he said.

The startup’s consulting service also goals to attract local businesses, which frequently find it difficult to obtain adequate infrastructure without spending hundreds of dollars.

“Very often customers come to us and say they want this high number of GPUs… and when we really look at the requirements, it turns out they don’t need half the amount they asked for,” Sanghi said.

Neysa raised $30 million in an all-equity Series A round led by its existing investors NTTVC, Z47 (formerly Matrix Partners India) and Nexus Venture Partners. This follows the startup’s $20 million seed round earlier this yr.

The latest funds, Sanghi said, will strengthen Neysa’s infrastructure, enhance its research and development and expand its market entry. The funds can even create the idea for the startup to launch an integrated Gen AI cloud acceleration service.

The startup currently employs 55 people and can expand by adding more engineers and staff to expand direct and indirect sales.

Neysa currently has about 12 paying customers and is running about six large proofs of concept. Sanghi said that as much as 70 percent of the whole customer base has opted for a personal cluster, with the remaining 30 percent using the general public cloud.

While Sanghi didn’t reveal the names of Neysa’s clients, he said the startup broadly serves three categories: research institutes, AI-based startups and company clients, initially within the banking, manufacturing and media sectors.

Neysa’s current customer base is in India, although Sanghi said the startup plans to enter global markets with one other round of financing – talks have already begun and are expected to be accomplished in the subsequent six to nine months.

He didn’t reveal the precise amount Neysa wants to raise in the subsequent round, although he said it will be “an order of magnitude more than what we have currently raised.” The startup also plans to tackle debt to meet growing demands for GPU and other infrastructure.