Arnab Mitra, who grew up in Calcutta and is the CEO of homegrown cloud storage and file-sharing platform Digiboxx, has a plan to go global but with a difference.

In the future, users will be able to select which country they would like to store their data, a flexibility necessitated by the increasing focus on data localisation.

Although being present in a highly competitive cloud storage segment, that includes the likes of global tech giants such as Google (Google Drive), Microsoft (One Drive), Apple (iCloud) and specialists such as Dropbox, Mitra anticipates that with a differentiated offering he will be able to scale up the user base of DigiBoxx.

The company was founded during the Covid-induced lockdown in 2020 and currently has around 1 million regular users. The plan involves expanding the user base to 100 million and expanding to six locations covering five continents.

“Whether we like it or not, the reality is that there will be data protection regulations in every country. A flexible company like ours will be able to fare better than a global giant,” Mitra said.

“The idea is to allow users to be able to store their data based on their preferred region. Users will be able to select where they want to keep their data. This would make us one of the most flexible cloud data storage providers.”

He added that value additions such as regional language support, editing photos, password protection, expiry dates on shared links, more storage at lower prices and not mining personal data for marketing and advertisement have worked among young users in India. The fundamentals could help the company to draw more users from other countries onto the platform.

Operating on an asset-light model, the company will not be having its own data centres but will be a consumer of the large data centre capacities being created globally. The company will explore partnerships with local companies and have local teams to manage global operations.

The company has so far raised about $3 million and has plans to raise around $8 million at a valuation of $30 million.