In an era of rapid digital advancement for India, initiatives like SmartGaon emphasise that technology's significance lies in its ability to empower and connect with people, rather than just its technical prowess. SmartGaon was focused on using technology to address issues in governance, healthcare, education, and livelihoods at the community level, long before concepts like AI and cloud computing became widespread business discussions. In a conversation with ET Digital, Yogesh Sahu, Chief Product and Business Officer at EVOCS Tech and its Indian entity Velloe, discusses how his experiences with a groundbreaking rural digital project in India still influence his work in enterprise tech, platform innovation, and digital infrastructure. Edited excerpts.
The Economic Times (ET): Your career spans grassroots digital transformation through SmartGaon to enterprise-scale infrastructure at EVOCS Tech. What prompted this shift from social-impact innovation to enterprise technology, and how did your priorities evolve along the way?
Yogesh Sahu (YS): For me, the transition was never really about moving away from social impact into enterprise technology. It was always about solving meaningful problems through technology at different levels of scale.
From my early years at Tech Mahindra to working with startups, telecom ecosystems, and enterprise technology businesses, I got the opportunity to understand how technology can directly influence operations, customer experience, growth, and scalability.
I worked with startups and smaller businesses where the focus was survival, speed, and solving immediate operational problems. Some of those businesses later scaled significantly, and being part of that journey taught me how products evolve from ideas into large-scale ecosystems.
Later, while working with Jio Platforms Limited, I got exposure to building and scaling large digital ecosystems, enterprise collaboration platforms, cloud environments, automation-led systems, and customer-centric digital solutions. I learned a lot while working closely with leadership teams there, especially around scale, execution, operational thinking, and long-term platform vision. I remain grateful for those learnings.
Alongside this professional journey, SmartGaon was always a personal passion project rooted in nation-building. The idea was simple: use my technological expertise to create awareness, improve accessibility, automate services, and solve real-world grassroots problems while living and working closely with villagers.
That experience deeply shaped my thinking as a product leader because it showed me that technology only becomes meaningful when it improves people’s lives in a practical and sustainable way.
Today at EVOCS Tech and Velloe, I look forward to taking on the responsibility of scaling APAC operations, leading GTM for global technology products, and growing Velloe’s business in the data center and cloud ecosystem space across the APAC region.
ET: SmartGaon focused on solving real-world challenges in rural India such as governance access, healthcare, employment, and connectivity. How did that experience shape your understanding of product design and user behaviour, especially for large-scale digital platforms?
YS: SmartGaon gave me one of the most important learning experiences of my career because it exposed me to real-world challenges at the grassroots level.
When you live in villages and interact directly with communities, you realize very quickly that technology has to be practical, trustworthy, and easy to adopt. People are not interested in technical complexity. They care about whether technology genuinely helps improve their day-to-day lives.
Through SmartGaon, we focused on awareness, tech enablement, digital accessibility, and connecting villagers with government schemes, healthcare support, employment opportunities, and information systems.
One of the biggest learnings for me was understanding how important simplicity and trust are in product adoption.
That understanding still influences how I approach enterprise platforms today. Whether you are building systems for enterprises or communities, users ultimately value clarity, reliability, ease of use, and measurable outcomes.
What also makes SmartGaon special for me is that it was driven by intent rather than commercial ambition. The project received support and recognition from the Government of India, and it became known as India’s first SmartGaon initiative. But beyond recognition, the real achievement was learning directly from villagers and understanding how technology can bridge social and economic gaps.
Today, SmartGaon is also working towards launching SmartGaon AI, a rural transformation platform designed to create a unified digital ecosystem for villages. The idea is to help rural communities access government services, healthcare, education, crop and farm guidance, entrepreneurship support, digital business skills, and livelihood opportunities through technology-enabled systems. The larger mission remains building self-reliant and connected villages across India.
ET: You have worked across telecom, healthcare, collaboration platforms, cloud ecosystems, and enterprise SaaS. What common lessons have emerged from building products in such diverse sectors, and how has India’s product ecosystem changed over the last decade?
YS: Across industries, one common learning has remained consistent: customers ultimately care about whether a product genuinely solves their problems.
Whether you are working in telecom, healthcare, cloud ecosystems, or enterprise platforms, businesses value technology that simplifies operations, improves efficiency, enables scalability, and delivers measurable business outcomes.
Another important lesson is that technology alone is never enough. Execution, customer understanding, operational alignment, and long-term adaptability matter equally.
Over the last decade, India’s product ecosystem has evolved significantly. Earlier, the focus was largely service-oriented. Today, Indian companies are building stronger product ecosystems, scalable platforms, cloud environments, and globally competitive technology solutions.
I also believe India has become far more confident in creating its own innovation-led businesses instead of only supporting global ecosystems. There is a stronger appetite today for building intellectual property, solving complex operational challenges, and creating long-term technology infrastructure.
That shift is very visible across startups, enterprises, and digital infrastructure companies.
ET: India is increasingly talking about sovereign digital capabilities, compute infrastructure, and cloud independence. In your view, how prepared is the APAC region for the next wave of infrastructure demand, and where do the biggest gaps still exist?
YS: The APAC region is entering a very important phase in digital infrastructure evolution, especially around data centers, cloud ecosystems, compute infrastructure, and data sovereignty.
Enterprises and governments today are becoming far more conscious about where their data resides, how it is protected, and how infrastructure is designed from the ground up.
One area that will become increasingly important is state-of-the-art infrastructure design where data sovereignty, compliance, governance, and security are built into the system architecture right from the start rather than being added later as operational layers.
The demand for scalable and secure data center ecosystems is growing rapidly across APAC. However, there are still major gaps around infrastructure readiness, operational standardization, interoperability, and long-term scalability.
Another challenge is that traditional infrastructure environments were not designed for modern compute-intensive workloads and evolving enterprise requirements.
At EVOCS Tech and Velloe, we are focusing on building scalable, secure, and future-ready infrastructure ecosystems that help enterprises modernize operations while maintaining strong compliance, governance, and operational reliability standards.
ET: As Chief Product and Business Officer (CPBO) at EVOCS Tech, you are focusing on data centers, compliance systems, and hybrid cloud ecosystems. What are enterprises demanding today that traditional cloud or IT models are failing to deliver?
YS : Enterprises today are looking for far more than basic cloud adoption. They want integrated ecosystems that can support scalability, operational visibility, automation, compliance, governance, and business continuity in a seamless manner.
One of the biggest challenges enterprises face today is that infrastructure has grown rapidly, but operations have remained fragmented. Many organizations have different systems managing security, compliance, monitoring, workloads, and performance, which creates complexity and slows down decision-making.
Modern enterprises need infrastructure that is not just powerful but intelligent, adaptable, secure, and designed for future growth. They expect platforms that can simplify operations, automate repetitive processes, improve visibility, and help teams focus on innovation rather than managing complexity.
Compliance is also becoming a major priority. Businesses today operate across multiple regions, industries, and regulatory environments. They need systems where compliance, governance, audit readiness, and security controls are embedded into the platform design itself , rather than being treated as separate activities.
A similar transformation approach has shaped my product journey over the years. For example, while working on large-scale enterprise platforms, one of the focus areas was reducing operational dependency through automation and smarter workflows. By bringing together technology, process understanding, and user behaviour insights, we were able to help teams move from manual, fragmented operations towards more scalable and efficient digital ecosystems.
This philosophy continues at EVOCS Tech and Velloe, where we are focused on building next-generation data center and cloud platforms that combine automation, infrastructure intelligence, compliance-as-a-service, operational efficiency, and enterprise scalability into one ecosystem.
As CPBO at EVOCS Tech and Velloe, my aim is to take global technology products to market, strengthen enterprise adoption, and scale Velloe’s business across the APAC region in the AI data center space.
The goal is not just to help enterprises move to new technology, but to help them build infrastructure that can continuously evolve with changing business needs.
ET: You have built products both for “Bharat” and for large enterprises. How different are these two worlds when it comes to innovation, scalability, and customer expectations? Are there lessons enterprise tech companies can learn from grassroots innovation models?
YS: While these ecosystems appear very different externally, there are actually many similarities. Whether you are working with rural communities or enterprise customers, people value simplicity, trust, consistency, and measurable outcomes.
The difference lies mainly in operational complexity and scale.
Grassroots innovation teaches you how to work with constraints, limited resources, and real-world behavioural challenges. It forces you to focus on clarity, accessibility, and practical usability.
Enterprise ecosystems, meanwhile, involve larger operational structures, integrations, governance systems, security requirements, and scale management.
However, one important lesson enterprise companies can absolutely learn from grassroots innovation is simplicity.
Many enterprise systems become unnecessarily complex because they are built from a technology-first perspective rather than a user-first perspective.
My experience with SmartGaon reinforced the importance of designing solutions that people can genuinely adopt and benefit from easily. That mindset remains extremely relevant even in enterprise technology today.
ET: You often speak about “platform thinking” becoming central to digital business growth. What does platform thinking actually mean today, and how can Indian companies avoid becoming mere consumers of global technologies?
YS: Platform thinking is essentially about building connected ecosystems rather than isolated products. Businesses today operate in highly interconnected environments where infrastructure, operations, workflows, compliance, customer systems, analytics, and digital experiences all need to work together seamlessly.
The companies that will create long-term value are the ones building scalable ecosystems capable of integrating multiple operational and business layers into unified platforms.
India has a strong opportunity in this space because we have engineering talent, digital adoption at scale, entrepreneurial energy, and rapidly evolving infrastructure ecosystems.
However, Indian companies must move beyond only implementing or consuming global technologies. We need to invest more aggressively in original product ecosystems, infrastructure capabilities, platform ownership, operational innovation, and globally scalable technology businesses.
I believe India is entering a phase where it can contribute significantly towards global digital infrastructure and platform ecosystems over the next decade.
