India footprint is expanding as ‘customers expect’ Acceldata to work with GCCs, says co-founder Ashwin Rajeeva

The data platform company is working with global SIs through their India operations as enterprise customers route more data and AI delivery through GCCs.

Acceldata is expanding its India partner footprint as global enterprise customers expect the data platform company to work with their India-based global capability centres (GCCs), according to co-founder and CTO Ashwin Rajeeva.

“Acceldata’s partner ecosystem remains largely global, with many of its existing partners operating across multiple markets and engaging with the company through their India teams as customer delivery moves into GCCs,” Rajeeva told CRN India.

“Our customers expect us to work with the GCCs here, and that's the path we would take,” Rajeeva said.

The shift is creating a more India-specific delivery footprint for Acceldata, even though the company does not necessarily see the need to build a separate India-only partner ecosystem.

“Just like our customers are global, even the partnerships are global,” Rajeeva said.

According to him, Acceldata’s global enterprise customers have established GCCs in India, with more delivery and technology activity now taking place through those centres. The company is therefore looking to work with partners and their India operations to support those engagements.

Rajeeva said he recently met GCCs of large enterprises in Hyderabad and Pune, with many of these engagements taking place through partners.

Acceldata’s approach means Indian partner expansion is closely tied to the local presence of its global SI relationships.

Rajeeva said the company’s partners typically operate globally, with senior partner executives and account teams often based outside India, while the relationships are then extended to local teams as customer requirements move into India.

“We want to expand our partner base, but more often than not, what we see is that the partners in India are kind of part of this global group,” he said.

The company is seeing delivery happening through GCCs in India after spending much of its eight-year history with most delivery focused on the US.

That shift is also changing where Acceldata expects its partners to create value.

Want SIs to build implementation businesses around its platform

Rather than positioning partners primarily as software resellers, Acceldata wants service providers to use its technology as the foundation for broader implementation and transformation engagements.

Rajeeva said Acceldata’s role is to provide the technology, expertise and training around its platform, while partners can take responsibility for implementation and delivery.

“Our strong point as a technology provider is to provide technology and training and, to some extent, support at a higher level,” he said.

For service providers looking to build implementation practices, Rajeeva said the opportunity extends across hybrid data platforms, AI technology and agent technology.

“Any service provider who wants to be in the implementation business, implement the hybrid data platform for the next company using Acceldata technology, implement our AI technology or agent technology, that is where I think the most value will come in,” he said.

The model also gives partners an opportunity to expand their existing enterprise relationships into data and AI transformation projects.

Rajeeva said enterprises are asking partners what they should do around AI, transformation and AI agents. Acceldata sees its technology as something partners can use to answer those requirements while building their own services capabilities around the platform.

Hybrid data becomes the partner proposition

A key part of that opportunity is Acceldata’s positioning around hybrid data environments.

Rajeeva said Acceldata is one of the few providers in the space that can deliver a consistent platform experience across on-premises and cloud environments.

For partners already working with platforms such as Databricks, Snowflake or Informatica, he said Acceldata can address customers that need to retain workloads across different environments rather than moving everything to the cloud.

“If your need is to stay hybrid and you want to have the same platform in different countries, different localities and different substrates, on-premises and on cloud, then we could be a better fit,” he said.

The opportunity extends to customers that cannot move all workloads to the cloud, are facing high cloud costs, or need to run AI and agents on private infrastructure.

Acceldata also positions the platform around sovereign requirements, allowing data in different countries to remain and operate within those countries while being managed through a global platform.

Rajeeva said the company has strong integration with existing data tooling, including Databricks and on-premises and Hadoop environments, and sees this as part of its data platform modernisation proposition.

For partners, that creates an opportunity to take Acceldata into customers that need to modernise legacy data environments without moving entirely to a single infrastructure model.

India engineering base gives partners direct technical access

Acceldata’s engineering presence in India is also becoming part of its partner enablement strategy.

Rajeeva said having a large amount of talent in the same time zone allows Indian partners to work more directly with Acceldata engineers, particularly for training and technical support.

“The biggest advantage that any partner in India has is that a lot of our talent is in the same time zone,” he said.

He pointed to one service partner that has already trained almost 500–600 people through Acceldata’s platform, with the training focused on data observability.

The company also has a training programme and portal, with leaders assigned to partner training and the ability to bring in engineers who can deliver technical training.

Rajeeva said Acceldata is in early conversations with partners about creating their own centres of excellence, particularly as larger SIs look for broader technology capabilities they can take into enterprise engagements.

“We are a little early, and we try to do as much technical and engineer-supported functionality as possible,” he said.

Mid-sized SIs can participate in enterprise engagements

The partner opportunity is not restricted to the largest global systems integrators.

Rajeeva said mid-sized and large SIs can participate, with Acceldata already seeing both categories within its customer base.

The engagements, however, tend to be broader than transactional software deals.

Customers may be looking at platform modernisation or establishing data quality as an organisational practice, with projects requiring software, platform training, delivery and integration with internal tools over an extended period.

“I would say the deal sizes that we generally close are slightly larger than what other startups or early companies might be doing,” Rajeeva said.

He described the opportunity as sitting between a typical startup engagement and the very large transformation contracts associated with the biggest IT services companies.

Banking and data-heavy enterprises lead the opportunity

Banking is currently Acceldata’s largest customer segment, followed by telecom and life sciences, with the company also working with CPG customers.

But Rajeeva said the opportunity is not driven only by regulation.

The more important factor is the scale and age of an enterprise’s data environment.

Larger banks and other enterprises have often invested in data platforms for 10–15 years and now face the challenge of modernising those environments while preparing for AI.

“They are now in a position where they want to modernise all their legacy while keeping the modernity, getting ready for AI and things like that,” he said.

That puts sectors such as BFSI, insurance, healthcare and telecom among the areas where partners are likely to find the strongest opportunities.

By contrast, newer technology companies often have more modern data stacks and engineering capabilities already in place, meaning their modernisation requirements are likely to emerge later as those businesses scale.

Platform access and certification are part of partner enablement

Acceldata is also providing partners with access to its platform so they can build internal expertise and demonstrate the technology to customers.

Rajeeva said partners can receive internal instances for training as well as demo instances for customer engagements.

The company also has certification programmes through which developers can become Acceldata-certified, although Rajeeva acknowledged that the certification programme is still at an early stage.

The broader partner strategy is therefore taking shape around the combination of global customer relationships, India-based GCC delivery, SI implementation capabilities and direct technical access to Acceldata’s engineering teams.

For Acceldata, the expanding GCC footprint is becoming a key route into India, while global partners and their local teams provide the services and implementation layer needed to deliver data and AI transformation projects.