The Secret Weapon Firms are Using to Cut Cloud Costs by 20%
In 2025, cloud is omnipresent in every industry, with the rise of generative AI further fuelling the demand. However, this push also comes with an increase in cloud bills. While big enterprises can largely handle the costs, startups or smaller companies wouldn’t mind if the prices were cut by at least a quarter for these bills. CloudKeeper promises just that. It is a cloud cost optimisation platform, carving a distinct path in the crowded cloud services market by focusing on a single, often overlooked issue—cloud bills. Spearheaded by Deepak Mittal, CloudKeeper’s CEO, the company’s mission is simple: reduce clients’ cloud costs by up to 20%. “You’ll find many companies that offer a wide range of cloud services, but CloudKeeper is different because we only do cost optimisation, and we do it end-to-end,” Mittal said in an exclusive conversation with AIM. The company achieves its cost reduction promise through a combination of commercial levers, consulting services, and self-serve software. At the commercial level, CloudKeeper helps clients tap into hyperscaler discount programmes and employs a unique group buying strategy. “We aggregate demand from multiple customers to negotiate better discounts from hyperscalers, and we pass on a big chunk of that benefit to our clients,” Mittal explained. The remaining margin, combined with the reseller fees from AWS and others, forms CloudKeeper’s revenue model. The second lever is hands-on services. CloudKeeper works closely with clients to identify inefficiencies and underutilised resources—sometimes even “zombie resources”—in their cloud environments. In addition, the company equips clients with a suite of self-serve tools that provide real-time analytics and actionable recommendations. Success Stories Tell the Tale With clients like Zepto, CarDekho, MobiKwik, Tata 1mg, Lenskart and Pocket FM, among several others, CloudKeeper seems to be running below the radar. It hasn’t raised institutional funding—and that’s intentional. “We’re profitable and growing well. We don’t need to burn cash or raise capital just for the sake of it,” Mittal said. “We’re actually doing big things, not just talking about them.” For example, MobiKwik, one of India’s fastest-growing fintech companies, partnered with CloudKeeper to tackle visibility gaps, cost attribution challenges, and inefficient reserved instances and savings plans (RI/SP) management on AWS. Initially adopting CloudKeeper AZ and later transitioning to CloudKeeper EDP+, MobiKwik achieved an immediate 12% savings on its AWS bills without changing its infrastructure. MobiKwik achieved an additional 15% savings, bringing total AWS cost reductions to 27%. With enhanced tagging, financial transparency, anomaly detection and the adoption of AWS Graviton processors, CloudKeeper helped MobiKwik gain tighter cost control and optimise their entire cloud environment. Damstra Technology, a global enterprise software provider, faced challenges while managing its complex cloud workloads across multiple teams and locations, often deprioritising cost optimisation in favour of feature development. After onboarding CloudKeeper AZ in July 2020, Damstra immediately realised a 12% reduction in its AWS costs. With CloudKeeper Lens providing better cost visibility and anomaly detection ensuring proactive spend management, Damstra achieved a total AWS cost reduction of 22%. Another interesting use case was built for CarDekho, one of India’s largest digital automotive platforms. The company needed a cost-effective, high-performance alternative to its Akamai CDN setup. Partnering with CloudKeeper, they seamlessly migrated over 400 domains to AWS CloudFront, eliminating data transfer fees and achieving significant CDN cost savings—all with zero downtime and no data loss. Mittal pointed out that CloudKeeper stands out as a rare product-led company from India. While most Indian firms are service-centric, CloudKeeper is building software. This resonates with investors, even though the firm doesn’t aim to raise capital right now. India remains the company’s largest market. “About 50% of our revenue currently comes from India,” said Mittal. “We’re the largest player here, but the US is where we see the next wave of growth.” No Extra Budget Needed Mittal emphasised that CloudKeeper is cost-neutral for clients. “If a client is spending $100,000 per month on cloud, after working with us, their bill typically comes down to $85,000 or even $80,000. We pay for ourselves,” he said. In 2024, CloudKeeper acquired WiseOps, a company building automation tools for cloud optimisation. “We already had CloudKeeper Lens for analytics,” Mittal said. “WiseOps had developed the next logical step—automated actions based on inefficiencies detected in the infrastructure. So we acquired them and rebranded their solution as CloudKeeper Tuner.” The move bolstered CloudKeeper’s product suite with more automation, enabling it not just to recommend actions, but also execute them, such as shutting down idle servers. CloudKeeper, which already serves over 100 clients in North America, has recently made a strategic push into the US market. “Until last year, we had customers from the US but no local presence,” Mittal said. Recently, the company appointed Kenneth Ziegler as a senior advisor and board member from the US. Ziegler was formerly the president and CEO of Logicworks (now known as RapidScale). The US, as Mittal noted, represents a disproportionately large share of global tech spending, making it a key market for the company’s future. CloudKeeper’s biggest differentiator, according to Mittal, is that it’s one of the very few companies offering a truly end-to-end solution in this space. “Most players focus on one aspect—either software, consulting, or reselling. We do all three. That’s what sets us apart. We’re not just a SaaS company or a consulting firm. We’re a full-stack cloud cost optimisation partner,” he concluded.
Some of CloudKeeper’s clients include Zepto, CarDekho, Tata 1mg, Lenskart, MobiKwik, and Pocket FM.
Some of CloudKeeper’s clients in India include Zepto, CarDekho, Tata 1mg, Lenskart, MobiKwik, and Pocket FM.
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["Rapids", "Go", "AWS", "AI", "ML", "Aim", "anomaly detection", "generative AI", "analytics", "R"]
["AI", "ML", "analytics", "generative AI", "Aim", "Rapids", "anomaly detection", "AWS", "R", "Go"]
Mohit writes about AI in simple, explainable, and often funny words. He's especially passionate about chatting with those building AI for Bharat, with the occasional detour into AGI.