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Piramal Finance Achieves 25% Cost Savings on Azure through Cloud 9’s Proprietary Framework.

Piramal Finance is a leading non-banking financial company (NBFC) in India offering diversified retail and MSME lending solutions. With over 350 branches and a fast-growing customer base, the company has embraced cloud infrastructure to enable digital lending workflows and enterprise system scalability. Microsoft Azure powers its loan processing platforms, internal business applications, data analytics, and process automation. As growth accelerated, cloud adoption intensified across business units, expanding Azure usage significantly.  

Challenge

This case is compelling because it demonstrates a real-world fintech cloud challenge: scaling fast in Azure without losing control of cloud economics. Most optimization stories only highlight short-term cost cuts. This engagement moves beyond that by proving how cost visibility, engineering accountability, and governance maturity can be built simultaneously. Instead of treating cost optimization as a one-time activity, we reduced cloud spend while improving governance and operational efficiency. It is a rare example of balancing cloud growth with financial responsibility. 

As Azure workloads expanded, cloud spending became difficult to predict and justify. The absence of cost ownership and standardized governance made optimization reactive rather than strategic. Core challenges included: 

  • Escalating cloud spend 

Uncontrolled Azure consumption led to month-on-month cost increases and budget variance. The absence of structured governance led to operational costs exceeding planned budgets. 

  • Lack of visibility and cost attribution 

Cloud costs were centralized under IT, making it difficult to understand who consumed what and why. This limited transparency hindered effective accountability and optimization across departments. 

  • Unmanaged resources driving cloud cost  

Several resources operated without governance controls, remaining active or oversized beyond business requirements. Idle and non-production workloads continued consuming capacity, contributing to unnecessary cloud spend. 

Solution

Cloud 9 executed a structured Cost Optimization and governance framework for Piramal Finance, combining Azure best practices with FinOps methodology. The engagement was delivered in a phased and controlled manner. 

We began by establishing a foundation of transparency across Azure spending. 

  • Conducted a detailed cost audit using various tools to analyze 12 months of consumption trends 
  • Built environment-wise cost visibility across Production, UAT, and Development workloads 
  • Identified top cost drivers across the process to manage workloads 
  • Introduced structured tagging standards across applications, business units, and workload owners 
  • Highlighted immediate leakage areas including idle compute, unattached disks, zombie IP addresses, and over-provisioned storage 

This phase converted cloud spending from a single, aggregated number into a clear financial map with traceable cost ownership. 

Results

Cloud 9 delivered measurable financial and operational impact, transforming Piramal Finance’s approach to cloud economics and governance. Based on detailed consumption data, the engagement uncovered clear opportunities to improve efficiency, accountability, and cost control. Through structured execution, Cloud 9 enabled a sustainable, cost-aware operating model. 

  • Recommended savings of 18 percent in overall Azure spending based on usage reports 
  • Identified 32 percent potential optimization in compute and storage utilization 
  • Improved forecast accuracy to within 6 percent variance, strengthening budgeting discipline 
  • Enhanced engineering ownership through clearer accountability and visibility 
  • Reduced redundant workloads and improved overall cloud hygiene 
  • Shifted operations from reactive clean-ups to a cost-aware architecture framework 
  • Established a scalable governance model ensuring sustained financial control 

Through structured execution, Cloud 9 ensured optimization was not a one-time exercise. Piramal Finance continues to benefit from ongoing resource and cost monitoring under the Cloud 9 MSP Program. 

Company

Size: 10,000+ employees
Location: Mumbai

Industry

Financial Services

Practice Areas

  • Cloud Infrastructure and Management

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