Trunkoz rolls out data storage services

Mumbai-based IT products and solutions provider Trunkoz Technologies Pvt Ltd is rolling out a data storage product targetted at small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Trunkoz is entering a market dominated by entrenched players such as EMC and IBM as well as new-age companies such as Dropbox and SugarSync. Several Indian startups such as Vaultize and Infinite Vault too have been focussing on SMEs.

Trunkoz claims that the adminstrator control features of QSNova would set it apart from the other players in the space.

"There are other players in the market who provide world-class backup solutions, however, they come with certain limitations. The concept of cloud storage is nothing new, but the fear of losing data still prevails," Hiren Shah, founder chairman, Trunkoz Group, and CEO of QSNova, told Techcircle.in.

"There is a dominant player in Amazon Web Services in this space. Without a really good product differentiator and deep pockets, it is very difficult for a new player to survive in this space," said Mahesh Murthy, managing partner of Seedfund.

Focussing on the local market could help Trunkoz, says Vikram Upadhyaya, chief Mentor and accelerator evangelist, GHV Accelerator. "The market is quite huge. Staying local could prove to be the edge as there has been no benchmarks set on this front. If the right value addition is inserted into the product, there is definitely a huge potential to strike it big," he said.

QSNova, which will be formally rolled out on November 10, will later be offered to corporates also.

The Indian storage market is projected to reach $307 million in 2016, a 3 per cent increase from 2015, according to Gartner.

Cloud-based storage is popular in the SME segment, as well as among new startups and enterprises, for their non-critical business data given the lower costs. Storage vendors accordingly are positioning their cloud offerings to capture this growing SME segment.

QSNova is priced at Rs36,000 for 200GB of storage space annually. It has no bar on the number of users and willl offer customised packages based on client requirements. Bundling QSNova with Trunkoz's other services could perhaps help it get a foothold in this competitive market.

Dropbox, one of the most popular file-sharing and online storage services companies, offers its premium Dropbox Business at $750 (around Rs 49,253) a year with a data limit of 5TB for five users. Dropbox has several other packages too.

Vaultize charges $8-10 per month 2TB onwards. The startup received Series A funding from Tata Capital in 2013.

Founded in 1998 by brothers Hiren Shah and Ashish Shah, Trunkoz has four businesses – Qualispace (domain space registrar), Connect Reseller (domain reseller), Vertoz (an ad solutions platform) and Vokut (premium content publisher).