KubeCon + CloudNativeCon India 2025: My experience

From scaling Kubernetes, observability, powering huge AI projects to real stories from PepsiCo, Flipkart, and Intuit, KubeCon + CloudNativeCon India 2025 in Hyderabad was a deep dive into where cloud-native ecosystem is headed. Here’s my personal experience about the event.

I had the chance to attend KubeCon + CloudNativeCon India this year. Its a two-day technical conference packed with thoughtfully curated keynotes, tech talks, and lightning sessions from the people shaping the Kubernetes ecosystem and the cloud-native world. The event also featured ~30 product/solutions booths showcasing solutions to help organizations with Kubernetes workloads, security, scaling, observability, platform engineering and their AI journey. Before we get into more details, take a look at these key numbers and details:

Held at Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC).
Happened on 6-7 August 2025.
Sessions
- 12 Keynote sessions
- 10 lightning talks
- 56 Tech sessions on K8s, Observability, Scaling, Security, AI + ML, Platform engineering, etc.
Approx ~4000 registrations
~30 product/solutions booth by various companies.
The 2026 KubeCon India is announced to be held in Mumbai!
Watch this event’s session recordings, available on the CNCF YouTube Channel.
Review session slides from speakers who provided them via the event schedule.

With so much on the agenda, it’s very difficult for one person to attend everything. That’s why pre-planning is essential for events of this scale. It was worth creating a schedule focused on the sessions and booths that match your interests. The Sched app made this much easier, helping me build my personal agenda so I wouldn’t miss anything important.

There were these ~30 product/solutions booth at the event (Sorted alphabetically)-

Akamai – Akamai Cloud. Simple, Scalable and out of this world.
Atlassian – Delivering greatness is impossible alone. Jira. Confluence. Loom. Rovo.
AWS – Scalable, Reliable and Secure Kubernetes
CAST AI – Kubernetes Automation and Performance
Clickhouse + HyperDX – The world’s fastest analytical database
Cloudflare
Coralogix – Complete Observability, Zero compromises.
D E Shaw & Co
Digital Ocean
Dragonfly – In memory data store. Cut Redis costs by 50%
EDB Postgres II by CloudNativePG – Setting the Standard for PostGres in Kubernetes
Expedia group – Careers
F5 – Optimize, Scale, and Secure Apps in Kubernetes
GitHub
Gitlab – Develop, secure and deploy software faster
Google Cloud
Grafana Labs – Open, composable and cost-effective observability.
Intel – AI inside for a new Era
Kloudfuse – Unified Observability. Your Cloud. Your Control.
Kodecloud – Kubernetes learning platform
Kong – Kube-native. Platform-forward.
Last9 – Ship fast. triage faster.
Learning Lounge CNCF – The Linux Foundation Education
Microsoft Azure – Achieve more with Azure hosted Kubernetes
Nudgebee – AI-Agentic Assistants. Troubleshooting. FinOps. CloudOps.
Nutanix – Kubernetes. Virtualization. Data. Anywhere.
PerfectScale by doit – Autonomous Kubernetes. Optimization and Governance.
RedHat OpenShift
ScyllaDB – Predictable Performance at Scale – Anywhere
Sonatype – Scalable Artifact Management
vmware – Kubernetes Made Simpler, More Flexible and Secure.
VULTR – Global cloud infrastructureand manage Kubernetes for AI-native applications

My experience

I traveled with my team to attend the event, and ignoring the travel fatigue, we made it to HICC by 8 AM for the check-in formalities. We were ready after security checks done and we received our event badges. The venue welcomed us with tea, coffee, and cookies – a much-needed warm-up before a day packed with technical deep dives.

By 9:30, as per the agenda, the keynote sessions started. The crowd was so massive that the main hall quickly filled up, but crew arranged adjacent halls with big screens for live streaming. We settled into one of those adjacent halls, but due to some technical glitches with the screen and audio, we decided to head back to the main hall and stand along the sides just to catch the keynotes live. After an hour of inspiring talks (and sore legs :D), we stepped out for a break and then dove into exploring the product and solution booths.

The booths were sparkling with energy! Attendees deep in conversations with booth teams, exploring new features and solutions – it was a energetic sight! It was great to see fresh graduates in the mix, already well-versed in cloud technologies. The enthusiasm was contagious, and of course, no developer conference is complete without a shower of freebies and laptop stickers. We do collected a healthy stash!

The iconic “Kubestronauts” blue jackets were turning heads throughout the venue. It’s a title one can earn by completing five Kubernetes and cloud-native certifications, a badge of honor that carries serious weight in the Kubernetes world today. Seeing a few Kubestronauts proudly sporting those jackets was truly inspiring!

We split up to cover more ground, each visiting different booths. My own highlights are the insightful discussions I had at the AWS and Nudgebee booths. Both offered interesting perspectives and solutions worth exploring further.

The organizers smartly arranged lunch across multiple dining designated areas, which helped spread out the crowd and made it possible for attendees to enjoy a peaceful, crowd-free meal.

We contiunued the second day with similar agenda of attending sessions and booths gathering every possible bit of the information that could help us keeping tab of the Cloud Native and Kubernetes world and industry progress in those domains. ArgoCD scaling, Platform Engineering, EKS Auto mode, EKS dashboards, Observability, AI integration for troubelshooting and Ops to name a few.

I also ran into a former colleague and reconnected with some contacts from AWS I had worked with in the past during the event. Also, got to see some open source community leaders, some well known personalities from Kubernetes/Cloud world in person. These technical conferences are they best way to network and socialize!