Cohesity’s $1 Billion Bet on India: Powering the Global Data Security Backbone from Bengaluru

In a resounding declaration of India’s strategic importance in the global technology landscape, Silicon Valley’s data security and management powerhouse, Cohesity, has announced a monumental $1 billion investment in India over the next five years. This move, coinciding with the inauguration of its expansive new campus in Bengaluru, signals a deep, long-term commitment to leveraging India’s engineering talent to combat the world’s most sophisticated data threats in the age of artificial intelligence.

Backed by industry titans like NVIDIA and SoftBank, Cohesity’s investment underscores a pivotal shift: India is no longer just a back-office or services hub for global tech giants; it is becoming a “global engine of innovation” for their most critical, forward-looking technologies.

Why India? The Strategic Imperative Behind the $1 Billion

For Cohesity, this investment is a strategic masterstroke driven by several compelling factors:

1. India is its Fastest-Growing Market: The explosive digitization of Indian enterprises, from banking and telecom to IT services, has created a massive demand for robust data protection and security solutions. Investing in the market you are winning in is a classic growth strategy.
2. Unparalleled Engineering Talent Density: The investment will primarily scale engineering and R&D efforts. Cohesity’s India headcount has already tripled to 2,200 following its $3 billion acquisition of Veritas’s data protection business, with Indian teams now leading global projects like workload connectors. This talent pool is essential for building the next generation of AI-driven security products.
3. A Hub for AI and Deep-Tech Synergy: Cohesity’s focus on AI-powered data security dovetails perfectly with India’s own ambitions. The country is home to the $850+ million India Deep Tech Alliance (involving NVIDIA and others) and is pursuing an ambitious IndiaAI Mission. By planting its R&D flag in Bengaluru, Cohesity is plugging directly into this vibrant ecosystem of AI research and startups.

The Bengaluru Campus: More Than Just an Office

The inauguration of the new Bengaluru campus on December 4, 2025, by CEO Sanjay Poonen (formerly COO of VMware), is symbolic of this evolved role. It’s not an outsourcing center; it’s a Center of Excellence. The campus, which doubles the company’s office space, is designed for hybrid collaboration and will focus on frontier areas like:

• Multi-Cloud Data Protection: Securing data across complex hybrid cloud environments.
• Advanced Security: Building defenses against ransomware and sophisticated cyber threats.
• AI and Machine Learning Innovations: Developing the intelligent core that can predict, detect, and neutralize data breaches autonomously.

This facility, complementing its Pune location, will be a crucible where global problems meet Indian engineering ingenuity.

The Bigger Picture: Fortifying the $17B+ Indian AI Ecosystem

Cohesity’s investment is a critical piece of infrastructure for India’s own digital future. As the nation’s $17 billion+ AI ecosystem grows, the data that fuels it becomes its most valuable—and vulnerable—asset. Sophisticated AI models require vast, clean, and secure datasets. Cohesity’s technology provides the “vault” and “immune system” for this new digital wealth.

This aligns powerfully with the Atmanirbhar Bharat (Self-Reliant India) vision. While the company is U.S.-based, its deep R&D integration in India contributes to building domestic expertise in a critical, high-stakes domain—cybersecurity. It creates high-value jobs, fosters knowledge transfer, and strengthens the overall resilience of the Indian digital economy.

The Ripple Effect: Supercharging the Local Startup Ecosystem

A move of this scale has a multiplier effect. Cohesity’s presence will:

• Create a Talent Magnet: Attracting and training world-class engineers in cybersecurity and data management, who may later become founders of their own startups.
• Drive Partnership Opportunities: Indian startups in data infrastructure, cloud security, and AI ops could find Cohesity as a potential customer, partner, or even an acquirer.
• Validate the Market: It signals to global investors that India is a serious market for deep-tech cybersecurity innovation, potentially drawing more capital into the sector.

As CEO Sanjay Poonen highlighted, positioning India as a “global engine of innovation” has profound implications for the local tech landscape.

Conclusion: The Vault is Open for Builders

Cohesity’s $1 billion commitment is a landmark moment for India’s tech trajectory. It represents the maturation of the country’s role from a skilled workforce provider to a strategic innovation partner for solving global-scale technological challenges.

For founders in cybersecurity, data infrastructure, and AI, the message is clear: the global market for securing the world’s data is vast and urgent. With a giant like Cohesity doubling down on its Indian engineering hub, the ecosystem for building and scaling solutions in this space just received a massive vote of confidence and a potential powerhouse partner. The vault protecting the world’s data is being engineered in India, and the door for innovators is wide open.