CloudThat wins Microsoft FY26 Superstars Award for eighth recognition

Bengaluru: Another Microsoft award has landed at CloudThat. The Bengaluru-headquartered cloud and AI training and consulting firm has been named the India winner of Microsoft’s FY26 Superstars Award Campaign, marking its eighth Microsoft recognition since 2017 and its fourth Superstars Award.

The recognition comes as companies race to put artificial intelligence (AI) to work, but face a familiar bottleneck: finding people who know how to use it effectively.

CloudThat says it trained 3.8 lakh learners in Microsoft technologies during FY26, including 2 lakh through Microsoft 365 Copilot skilling programmes and another 85,000 across Azure Data and AI. The company also reported continued growth in Microsoft Certified Professionals and sustained learner acquisition during the year.

The need for such skills is expected to grow sharply. Gartner estimates that around 80 per cent of the engineering workforce will need to upskill by 2027 to keep pace with generative AI. Research from IBM has similarly highlighted the gap between access to AI tools and employees’ confidence and capability in using them.

That puts training firms in an increasingly important position as businesses move AI projects from experimentation into everyday operations.

CloudThat’s relationship with Microsoft stretches back more than a decade. Since 2012, the company says it has trained more than 11 lakh professionals globally, supporting over 2,000 certifications across more than 30 countries.

Its latest award adds to a run of Microsoft recognitions that CloudThat says reflects the scale of its training and consulting capabilities.

The company has also built a sizeable trainer network. Twenty of its in-house Microsoft Certified Trainers featured in Microsoft’s Top 100 Global MCT list for 2025, while 13 trainers received MCT Quality Awards for 2026.

The combination of certified trainers and large-scale programmes has allowed CloudThat to pursue both volume and certification outcomes, as businesses look for more structured ways to build cloud and AI capabilities.

“Winning our fourth Superstars title, and our eighth Microsoft recognition overall, tells us something bigger than an award ever could: that Microsoft has trusted us with its skilling ecosystem for more than a decade, and that the trust has held even as the technology underneath it evolved over time,” said CloudThat founder and CEO Bhavesh Goswami.

“It gives us real confidence as we push into our next phase of growth, expanding our global footprint and building CloudThat into the kind of AI skilling institution the world will keep needing, year after year,” he added.

CloudThat’s skilling efforts also extend beyond private-sector enterprises. The company has expanded its programmes into government, public sector and higher education.

Under AI Pragya, launched by the Centre for e-Governance, Government of Uttar Pradesh, in collaboration with Microsoft, CloudThat trained more than 1,560 government officials in areas including Copilot, Azure, responsible AI and cybersecurity.

The company has also delivered a similar programme for the Government of the Maldives, where it says monthly active usage of Microsoft tools increased by 20 per cent following the training.

Higher education is another focus. Rather than limiting its involvement to one-off workshops, CloudThat is working with institutions to build structured learning pathways that combine academic curricula with industry certifications.

Its curriculum partnerships include IIT (BHU) Varanasi, Shree Vaishnav Vidyapeeth University, Acharya, SKITM Indore and GD Goenka University. Students on these programmes can pursue seven Microsoft certification pathways covering Azure, AI, data science and business applications.

CloudThat plans to expand the model to 50 institutions over the next 12 months, potentially widening the pipeline of students entering the workforce with industry-recognised technology skills.

As AI adoption gathers pace, the technology itself may be grabbing the headlines, but the talent behind it remains the real engine. For CloudThat, the latest Microsoft recognition underlines its bet that India’s AI and cloud skills gap will create plenty more room for growth.