SoftClouds establishes European hub in Luxembourg

The international business community benefitting from Luxembourg as its base to reach the wider EU market has recently grown to include SoftClouds, an IT solutions provider specialising in CRM, customer experience and cloud technologies. Headquartered in the US with offices in Hyderabad, India and Tokyo, Japan, it has a total workforce of around 250.

Global expansion from the US to Europe

SoftClouds was founded in 2005 in San Diego, US by Indian computer scientist Balaji Ramachandran and his business partner Asokan Ashok. After starting with on-premise systems integration, the company moved on to cloud technologies, offering software and infrastructure as a service. Its originally American client base has expanded to include several prominent Asian automakers, as well as world-wide financial institutions.

We have not only survived but thrived – and we are 100% self-financed.
Balaji Ramachandran, SoftClouds

The company has demonstrated remarkable resilience over its two decades in business. "Less than 10% of companies survive after five years," Mr Ramachandran notes. "We started in 2005 and went through a global slowdown following the Twin Towers attack, the 2008 recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. We have not only survived but thrived – and we are 100% self-financed." Some client relationships span well over a decade: SoftClouds has worked with a global auto OEM for 14 years across Europe, North America, Japan and Australia.

At the occasion of the company’s 20^th anniversary last year, SoftClouds decided to expand its footprint in Europe, where it had already worked with several clients. The team saw further potential in the EU, particularly in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland, and was looking for a strategic location to reach these markets.  

Why Luxembourg? Innovation, location and opportunity

Luxembourg came up as an option through the connection with Indian entrepreneur Selvaraj Alagumalai – known as Selva – who also serves as the Honorary Consul of India to Luxembourg. “Luxembourg offers a wealth of opportunities as a business hub for Europe,” he says. “With a few hours’ drive or a short flight, you can reach many of the continent’s main business hubs, and the multilingual, multinational workforce makes it easy to work across different countries.” He also underlines that Luxembourg is a great location for conducting research and innovation activities underpinning the development of innovative products that can then be commercialised across Europe.

Luxembourg offers a wealth of opportunities as a business hub for Europe.
Selvaraj Alagumalai, the Honorary Consul of India to Luxembourg

On his invitation, Mr Ramachandran visited the Luxembourg Venture Days, a major European event connecting startups, scaleups and investors, and was impressed with what he saw. “There is much investment in Luxembourg, and a lot of innovation and R&D happening. This is interesting for us as we are currently developing an innovative product based on artificial intelligence that helps automate business processes and build generative AI chatbots. We are looking for both clients and additional funding for this part of our activity. Our objective is to spin off this product into a separate company, so we hope to explore the venture capital scene in Luxembourg and promote our AI-product there.”

Growing a European client base from Luxembourg 

SoftClouds comes to Europe with strong business cases in multiple industries, including high-tech and automotive manufacturing, telecommunications, insurance and financial services. Mr Alagumalai is guiding the company towards the opportunities available in Luxembourg, including joining the AutoMobility Campus north of Luxembourg City that is home to several businesses in the mobility sector. “Luxembourg’s real strength is the supportive ecosystem, where the government, the national innovation agency Luxinnovation and other organisations welcome international companies and help them develop,” he says.

For Mr Ramachandran, the priority is to identify business opportunities and become part of Luxembourg's innovation community. He also hopes to recruit the company's first European staff members this year. “We are not looking for quick money but for long-term relationships,” he says. “A key reason why we chose Luxembourg was Selva – we wanted to go where we had a trustworthy friend who could guide us. Now we're here, and we're ready to grow.”