Cloudflare: The business is moving to Tier 2 cities, and partners need to move with it
Suchanda Mandal says Cloudflare is building regional partner coverage across India as demand for AI infrastructure, GCCs, and enterprise services expands beyond the country's traditional technology hubs.
India’s next wave of AI and cloud demand will not be concentrated in a handful of technology hubs, and Cloudflare is building its partner strategy around that shift.
The company is looking to put partners closer to customers as AI infrastructure investments expand into Tier 2 and extended cities, rather than simply following physical data centre locations.
For Suchanda Mandal, VP Partnerships, APAC at Cloudflare, the opportunity is to build a regional partner network that can take Cloudflare’s platform, network and AI capabilities closer to customers across India.
“My thinking and our strategy is that we need to have partners closer to the customers because these data centres will power huge demand in AI-led services for our customers,” Mandal says.
Cloudflare’s approach is therefore not limited to cities such as Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai and Visakhapatnam, where significant AI infrastructure investments are taking shape. Mandal says the company wants regional partners across the North, East, West and South, supported by distributors with pan-India coverage.
The objective is to bring Cloudflare’s network and platform, including its AI capabilities, AI Gateway and Workers, closer to customers.
“We need to harness this momentum in AI and cloud, not necessarily closer to a physical data centre, but closer to the customer,” she says.
Cloudflare looks beyond the AI infrastructure hubs
The expansion of AI infrastructure into Tier 2 and extended cities is an indication of where demand is heading, according to Mandal.
She points to investments from hyperscalers, Adani and others as evidence that the infrastructure footprint is expanding. But Cloudflare does not intend to build its channel coverage simply around those investments.
Instead, the company wants partners positioned around the customers that will use the infrastructure and the applications running on it.
“That way, as your latency is minimised, you are still getting the most from your applications and your architecture, and we are building scale,” Mandal says.
That changes the role of the channel from geographic fulfilment to customer proximity. Cloudflare wants partners that understand the requirements of customers in different regions and can support them as they move towards AI-led workloads.
The company is already seeing demand across financial services, retail, public sector, healthcare and manufacturing.
Financial services, in particular, has been an area of success for Cloudflare in India and globally, including banks and non-financial banking institutions. Retail is another area where Mandal says the company is seeing traction.
The common factor is the urgency around AI.
“Where the move to AI is happening faster and is more imperative, we are seeing a lot more traction because the sense of urgency is there,” she says.
AI transition creates a services opportunity
As enterprises move from AI interest to deployment, Mandal says customers are facing a series of practical questions about how to make the transition.
They need to decide whether AI workloads should run alongside their existing platforms, whether they should transition in stages or make a broader change, and how the new architecture should fit into their existing environment.
That creates an opportunity for partners to take a larger role in managing the transition.
“Customers are also looking to partners to manage that transition because everybody has a lot of questions,” Mandal says.
The opportunity therefore extends beyond implementation.
“That’s why the whole managed services play also becomes very important,” she says. “Partners need to not just implement, but they need to be state of the art in managing the transition for customers.”
For Cloudflare, this also connects its regional coverage strategy with its broader push to build a deeper partner ecosystem in India.
Mandal says the company is still building the foundation of its partner business in the country and intends to expand its partner base significantly.
“We are looking to expand our partner base significantly,” she says.
GCCs add another layer to the opportunity
The expansion of GCCs gives Cloudflare another reason to look beyond traditional technology centres.
Mandal says Cloudflare views GCCs differently from local enterprise customers and believes its offering and architecture need to be tailored to their requirements.
India’s engineering talent, digital investments and compliance requirements are making it a natural base for GCCs, she says.
As these centres expand into Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, latency becomes an important consideration.
Cloudflare’s edge infrastructure is positioned to address that requirement by bringing services closer to where applications and users operate.
“The two main things” Cloudflare provides to GCCs are edge infrastructure alignment and developer autonomy, according to Mandal.
The second becomes important because GCCs increasingly operate as global engineering and development hubs. With Workers, developers can build and test applications independently while operating within sovereignty and regional requirements.
“They need to build advanced applications and work independently. They are a global hub for any company,” Mandal says.
Cloudflare does not yet have a dedicated partner programme specifically for GCCs.
Instead, Mandal says the company wants to work with GCCs, understand their requirements and identify gaps that may require a different approach.
“At this point, we haven’t provided a program for GCCs,” she says. “But what we want to do is work with them, understand the needs, see where the gaps are, and tailor it accordingly.”
That also leaves room for partners to shape the opportunity as GCC requirements become clearer.
Mandal says Cloudflare wants to understand whether partners encounter gaps that are specific to GCC customers and adapt accordingly.
“To me, this is a very, very important mandate,” she says. “It’s a great business for us.”
Regional partners become critical to scale
Cloudflare’s regional approach does not mean it is moving away from large national partners or distributors.
Mandal says the company wants both pan-India distribution coverage and regional partners that have strong local market penetration.
The distinction matters because India’s market is too broad for a single coverage model.
Cloudflare wants partners in individual regions that understand their local markets while also working with distributors that can provide broader reach.
That model is also intended to support the company as it expands beyond the small group of partners it currently works with.
When Cloudflare launched its Design Partner programme globally this year, it deliberately started with a handful of partners. In India, Softcell is currently the sole Design Partner.
Mandal says those partners were selected based on their maturity, technical expertise, understanding of Cloudflare’s offerings and experience working on larger customer engagements.
But the Design Partner programme is only one part of a wider ecosystem strategy.
Cloudflare is already training and building business with more partners, and Mandal says the company wants to bring new partners into the ecosystem as it expands in India.
“India is a high-growth market, needless to say, and we have not tapped the extent to which we can grow,” she says.
The next phase, therefore, is less about finding partners around a few major AI infrastructure locations and more about building coverage around where customers, workloads and AI demand are emerging.
For Cloudflare, the opportunity is to combine regional reach with the ability to support customers through the transition to AI.
And for partners, that creates a market that extends beyond selling technology into managed services, application architecture and ongoing customer support as India's AI footprint spreads into more cities and industries.