Backup as a Service in India rises as DPDPA reshapes data protection

Backup as a Service (BaaS) in India is moving from a selected few to prevalent to the masses, fuelled by the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, RBI guidelines, and sector-specific regulations in BFSI, healthcare, and the public sector. With hybrid and cloud-native architectures becoming standard, enterprises are reassessing their backup strategies. BaaS promises scalability, cost control, and flexibility, but Indian realities like data localisation, inconsistent connectivity, and integration with legacy systems remain critical challenges.

In this conversation, Nikhil Gupta, founder of Auxiliary Digitech, shares insights on Backup as a Service trends, challenges and future outlook.

Backup as a Service: From product sales to recurring resilience

“As data protection needs grew more complex, we transitioned from traditional backup solutions to Backup as a Service (BaaS) enabling us to deliver secure, scalable, and cost-efficient data protection on a subscription basis,” said Nikhil Gupta, founder of Auxiliary Digitech. “This evolution allowed us to shift from one-time product sales to a recurring revenue model, providing predictable cash flow, better customer retention, and continuous service improvement.”

Solving compliance, bandwidth, and trust challenges with BaaS

Gupta said their BaaS “not only meets compliance and disaster recovery needs but also positions us as a long-term strategic partner to our clients, helping them manage data resilience in an increasingly hybrid and cloud-native world.”

He listed the main barriers in deploying BaaS for Indian enterprises:

• Data residency and compliance – “Many Indian clients, especially in BFSI, healthcare, and government sectors, require data to reside within Indian borders due to regulations like RBI guidelines, HIPAA, and upcoming DPDP Act compliance. Ensuring our backup infrastructure adhered to these data localisation mandates required investment in India-based data centres or cloud zones.”

• Connectivity issues – “In several Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, we encountered limited internet bandwidth and unstable connectivity, which directly impacted backup windows and restore performance. We had to optimise our solutions for WAN efficiency, incremental backups, and data compression.”

• Building customer trust – “Indian enterprises traditionally preferred on-prem backup. Shifting them to cloud-based BaaS meant addressing concerns around data privacy, encryption, and SLAs. We had to run extensive awareness programs and offer transparent encryption policies, audit trails, and compliance mapping.”

• Legacy integration – “Many clients operated legacy apps and infrastructure that didn’t natively support modern BaaS APIs or cloud endpoints. We had to build custom connectors and hybrid deployment models that allowed on-prem-to-cloud integration.”

• Recovery expectations – “Indian enterprises demanded fast RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and RPO (Recovery Point Objective) guarantees. Meeting these expectations required distributed architecture, edge caching, and pre-staged recovery options.”

Gupta added, “We are keeping the data of our customer in AWS Mumbai to also cater to DPDP compliance.”

Cost savings with a data-centric approach

In a BFSI-adjacent success story, Gupta described a “fast-growing mid-sized IT services company” burdened by per-user licensed backup costs exceeding Rs 20 lakhs annually. “Most of the users’ data was either duplicated or inactive, but the company had to retain it due to audit and compliance requirements. They needed a smarter solution—one that didn’t punish them for growing.”

Auxiliary Digitech implemented a storage-based pricing BaaS model hosted in India. This included:

• Tiered storage for active and inactive data

• Incremental forever backups to cut bandwidth usage

• DPDP-ready local storage compliance

• Encryption and versioning for ransomware defense

“Within 3 months, their backup costs dropped by over 60%, with no compromise on recovery performance or compliance,” Gupta said.

Skills that power managed BaaS delivery

Gupta emphasised that expertise was essential. “Our team is certified, and our technology partner from London (UK) are trained in cloud infrastructure, backup and recovery, security and compliance, monitoring, and automation.”

The road ahead for Backup as a Service in India

The Indian BaaS market is set for accelerated growth as compliance deadlines approach and cyber threats intensify. Providers who can integrate DPDP compliance into architecture, adapt to bandwidth limitations, and deliver clear ROI will gain market share. As Gupta’s example shows, the future of backup in India will be shaped by service models that combine compliance readiness, cost-efficiency, and customer trust.

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