A newly registered company does not need a complex cloud setup, but it does need a few foundations that are painful to add later. Small line items add up: in AWS Mumbai a single NAT gateway costs $0.056 an hour before traffic, and every public IPv4 address costs $0.005 an hour. This blueprint shows what to build first, with prices checked on 7 November 2026.
Principles before services
Start with four rules. Keep production separate from everything else. Write infrastructure as code so it can be rebuilt. Prefer managed services over self-run ones until you have an operations person. Put a budget alert on every account on day one.
These rules matter more than which provider you use. The examples below use AWS Mumbai prices from the AWS Price List published on 7 November 2026, but the same pattern maps directly to Azure Central India in Pune, which Microsoft lists with three availability zones, or to Google Cloud Mumbai.
Layer 1: accounts, identity and billing
Create a management account that holds only billing and organisation settings, then separate accounts or subscriptions for production and for development. This limits the damage from a leaked key and makes cost reports readable. On Azure the same idea uses management groups and subscriptions; on Google Cloud it uses an organisation with folders and projects.
Turn on multi-factor authentication for every human user, use single sign-on with your company directory, and stop using the root user after setup. Give engineers role-based access that expires, not permanent admin keys. Store break-glass credentials offline, and review who has access every quarter or whenever someone leaves.
- Management account: billing, organisation policies, audit logs
- Production account: live workloads only
- Development account: experiments, with lower budget limits
- Central log archive with write-once retention
Layer 2: network
Use one VPC per environment in a single region, spread across two availability zones. Put load balancers in public subnets and application servers and databases in private subnets. AWS Hyderabad, for example, has three availability zones, which gives room to grow.
Watch the cost of the network plumbing. A NAT gateway in Mumbai is $0.056 an hour, roughly $40.88 a month, plus $0.056 per GB. Each public IPv4 address is $0.005 an hour, about $3.65 a month. For a very early product, VPC endpoints for storage or IPv6 can reduce or remove NAT traffic.
Layer 3: compute and delivery
For a first product, run one containerised application behind a load balancer, or use a serverless function platform if traffic is spiky. An Application Load Balancer in Mumbai costs $0.0239 an hour plus $0.008 per capacity-unit hour. Two t4g.small instances at $0.0112 an hour each cost about $16.35 a month together.
Deploy through a CI pipeline that builds an image, scans it and ships it, rather than copying files onto servers. Keep secrets in a managed secrets store, never in environment files committed to Git. Use separate pipelines or approval steps for production, and keep the previous image ready so you can roll back in minutes.
Layer 4: data, storage and backups
Use a managed relational database unless you have a clear reason not to. In Mumbai, RDS PostgreSQL on db.t4g.micro is $0.021 an hour in a single zone and $0.042 an hour with Multi-AZ, which keeps a standby in a second zone. Single-zone gp3 database storage is $0.131 per GB-month.
Store files in object storage. S3 Standard in Mumbai costs $0.025 per GB-month for the first 50 TB. Turn on automated database backups, versioning on important buckets and, once revenue starts, a copy of backups in a second region such as Hyderabad.
Starter blueprint with monthly costs
The table prices a small production setup in AWS Mumbai at 730 hours a month, excluding tax, support plans and traffic-based charges. It is a starting point to edit, not a quote. Credits from AWS Activate, which start at $1,000 for self-funded startups, would cover this for several months.
| Component | Choice | Unit price (Mumbai) | Approx. monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Load balancer | Application Load Balancer | $0.0239/hour + LCU | $17.45 + usage |
| App servers | 2 x t4g.small | $0.0112/hour each | $16.35 |
| Database | RDS PostgreSQL db.t4g.micro Multi-AZ | $0.042/hour | $30.66 |
| DB storage | 20 GB gp3 Multi-AZ | $0.262/GB-month | $5.24 |
| NAT gateway | One shared gateway | $0.056/hour + $0.056/GB | $40.88 + traffic |
| Object storage | S3 Standard, 20 GB | $0.025/GB-month | $0.50 |
| Data out | First 100 GB | Free tier | $0.00 |
Layer 5: security and cost controls
Enable audit logging in every account and send it to the log archive. Turn on the provider's threat detection service and a configuration checker, and fix the high-severity findings each week. Encrypt databases and buckets with managed keys, which is usually a checkbox.
Set monthly budgets with alerts at 50%, 80% and 100%. Tag every resource with an owner and environment. XDQ Labs uses this checklist when it sets up cloud foundations for new SaaS products, because adding tags and budgets later is slow and error-prone.
- MFA and SSO for all users
- Audit logs to a separate account
- Encryption at rest on by default
- Budgets and anomaly alerts
- Weekly review of security findings
Frequently asked questions
What is a good cloud architecture for a small startup?
A single region across two availability zones, one VPC per environment, a load balancer in front of containerised app servers, a managed PostgreSQL database with backups, object storage for files, and separate accounts for production and development, all defined as code with budget alerts.
Do I need a NAT gateway on AWS?
Only if private servers must reach the internet. In Mumbai a NAT gateway costs $0.056 an hour plus $0.056 per GB processed, about $40.88 a month before traffic. VPC endpoints, IPv6 or public subnets for simple workloads can avoid it.
Should a new company use Multi-AZ databases?
Once real customers depend on the product, yes. In AWS Mumbai, Multi-AZ on db.t4g.micro PostgreSQL costs $0.042 an hour against $0.021 for a single zone, a small premium for automatic failover to a standby.
How many cloud accounts should a startup have?
At least three: a management account for billing and policies, a production account and a development account. Many teams add a fourth for central logs. Separation limits damage from leaked keys and keeps cost reports clear.
Sources
- AWS Price List: Amazon EC2, Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Amazon Web Services, 2026
- AWS Price List: Amazon VPC (public IPv4), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Amazon Web Services, 2026
- AWS Price List: AWS Data Transfer, Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Amazon Web Services, 2026
- AWS Price List: Amazon RDS and Aurora, Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Amazon Web Services, 2026
- AWS Price List: Amazon S3, Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Amazon Web Services, 2026
- AWS launches second cloud infrastructure region in India, iTnews Asia, 2022
- AWS Activate: startup credits, Amazon Web Services, 2026
- Azure regions list, Microsoft Learn, 2026
