Unresolved · Updated 26 August 2026

OVHcloud deleted our startup. This is how five years disappeared.

On 3 October 2025, OVHcloud completed the deletion of our entire Public Cloud project. Not a disk. Not a virtual machine. The project. Everything inside it went with it, including the wastewater AI datasets and models we had spent five years building. I found out six weeks later, by logging in.

I own my share of this. We did not keep a sufficiently independent off-provider backup, and that is why the loss was total rather than merely painful. This page does not ask you to forgive that. It asks OVHcloud to explain the part I could not have prevented: why the deletion process began at all.

01 / The short version

Ten facts, in order, in ninety seconds.

If you read nothing else, read this. Every line below is expanded later on this page and cited to a specific document page on the evidence page.

Provider-stated

OVHcloud's own words or records. Quoted and cited to the page.

My failure

Something UrbanBlue got wrong. Stated plainly, not buried.

UrbanBlue estimate

Our own figures. Not provider-confirmed, not adjudicated damages.

Firsthand account

My recollection, where no document exists. Labelled as such.

Unresolved

A question the private process never answered.

This labelling is the whole method. I would rather lose an argument than blur the line between what OVHcloud said and what I believe.

  1. We built a wastewater AI platform over five years.

    Microscopy hardware, computer vision, trained models, annotated datasets, and operator software, developed with support from MeitY-backed programmes, NIDHI-PRAYAS, SINE IIT Bombay, Techstars, and Imagine H2O.

  2. We put it on OVHcloud, and only OVHcloud.

    A European provider that publicly positioned itself around data protection and sovereignty. The concentration was our decision, and our mistake.

  3. April 2025: the same usage was billed twice, two different ways.

    Invoice IN9926 showed ₹2,602.80 due. Three days later, IN10378 invoiced the same March usage at ₹0 with the Startup Program voucher applied.

  4. August 2025: the zeroed invoice came back as pending.

    A later account notice identified IN9926 as an outstanding payment.

  5. September and October 2025: suspension, then permanent deletion.

    Support later stated the project was suspended on 3 September over a debt, and that the deletion task completed on 3 October, wiping the data.

  6. 18 November 2025: I logged in and the project was not there.

    I had come back to retrieve datasets and models for a new commercial use. It took three days and a support ticket to learn it had been gone for weeks.

  7. Support gave three explanations that do not reconcile.

    Terminated for non-payment (22 Nov), then not related to your payment (26 Nov), then indeed our responsibility (28 Nov). Claims later denied liability.

  8. We tried seven route types over eight months.

    Support, Claims, Legal, Startup Program, regional inboxes, named executives, and two rounds of registered post to India and France. Four deliveries confirmed.

  9. February 2026: Claims offered €700 cash, or €4,200 in credit.

    Presented as a commercial gesture with liability denied, and not tied to any assessment of the deleted assets or the reconstruction work required.

  10. July 2026: the exported case says Closed, Priority 4 — Low.

    No closing message, decision, accepted settlement, or closure rationale appears in the thirteen exported pages.

02 / What was deleted

The product did not reach repeatability. The engineering was not dead.

Before the invoices, the suspension, and the deletion, there was a serious, externally reviewed technical venture — and its assets already had a next commercial use lined up.

UrbanBlue AquaPulse composite showing annotated microbial microscopy, field hardware, an operator interface, and wastewater process analytics
UrbanBlue / AquaPulse platform Microscopy · field hardware · operator software · process analytics

UrbanBlue was built to make wastewater treatment observable.

Over several years we developed AquaPulse: microscopy hardware, computer vision, machine-learning models, process analytics, and cloud software designed to observe microbial conditions inside wastewater-treatment systems.

The first commercial product did not become the repeatable business we hoped for. I am not going to rewrite that history. But a product outcome is not the same thing as the value of the engineering behind it, and UrbanBlue was not an empty company.

What remained on that project
  • High-resolution microscopy systems for wastewater environments
  • Image-processing and microbial-classification pipelines
  • Annotated microscopy datasets and historical process data
  • Machine-learning models and experimental artifacts
  • Aeration, nutrient-balance, and sludge-condition indices
  • Dashboards and operator-facing software
  • Years of experiments, engineering decisions, and domain knowledge
Externally reviewed

This was not a weekend project.

UrbanBlue was developed through years of engineering, research, field work, and external review. It received grants, incubation, acceleration, or programme support through Government of India initiatives and recognised innovation organisations, including MeitY-supported programmes, NIDHI-PRAYAS, SINE IIT Bombay, Techstars, and Imagine H2O.

Their involvement does not prove every product claim or make commercial success automatic. It does establish that this was a real engineering programme built over years.

Why we came back

The work was already being brought back into production.

We had a purchase order and active written discussions for incorporating UrbanBlue's historical datasets, microbial intelligence, models, and process learning into another product. We had a working technical approach and a defined commercial requirement. This was not a vague future possibility.

The deletion did not erase a hypothetical future. It interrupted work that was already moving toward its next commercial application.

My failure

Why one provider? The concentration was a mistake, but it was not random.

The original commercial model had not produced enough capital to maintain fully replicated, multi-provider operational infrastructure. We selected OVHcloud as our primary provider because it was a major European cloud company that publicly positioned itself around data protection, sovereignty, and trusted infrastructure. We believed a provider of that size and positioning would have reliable billing, account-management, and project-governance processes.

That assumption turned out to be wrong for us. We were wrong to treat provider reputation as a substitute for independent recovery. A simpler off-provider archival copy was still our responsibility, and we did not implement one adequately.

03 / The login

One login changed the entire story.

18 November 2025. We went back for the resources needed for the next product. The project was not there. For three days I looked for an explanation that was not permanent loss.

Firsthand account Ticket timestamp is in the record
  1. 18 Nov — I logged in.

    I was there to retrieve the historical datasets, trained models, experiment records, and supporting assets we intended to use in another product.

  2. 18 Nov — the project was not there.

    Not one missing bucket. Not one stopped virtual machine. The Public Cloud project itself was not where it should have been.

  3. 18–21 Nov — I refreshed. Then I refreshed again.

    My first assumption was that the interface had failed to load. I checked from another browser, then went through the billing view. I kept returning because permanent loss still did not feel like a reasonable explanation.

  4. 21 Nov — I opened support.

    At 17:44 I opened ticket CS12897544. The request was blunt: the services appeared terminated, and I wanted access back.

  5. 22 Nov — the answer arrived.

    Support replied that the project had been suspended on 3 September, deleted on 3 October, and could not be recovered. It was not a display problem. The project had already been gone for seven weeks.

What is mine, what is documented

The 18 November access attempt and the three-day login sequence are my firsthand recollection. The 21 November ticket timestamp and Support's later suspension, deletion, and non-recovery statements are in the record.

04 / Their own record

A bill came back from the dead. The project did not come back at all.

This is the sequence I want OVHcloud to reconcile. I am not going to guess which internal process produced it. Here is what the invoices, the account notice, and Support's own dates say.

Every item below is a provider record or a provider statement
01 Apr 2025 · IN9926

₹2,602.80

Invoice total; ₹2,382.22 stated payable after TDS.

04 Apr 2025 · IN10378

₹0 due

The same March usage lines were invoiced with the Startup Program voucher applied.

22 Aug 2025 · Notice

IN9926 returns

A later account notice nevertheless identified IN9926 as pending.

The record shows conflicting billing treatment. It does not let me diagnose OVHcloud's internal account state. That explanation has to come from OVHcloud.


From suspension to permanent deletion

My failure

The notices existed. Automated suspension and deletion notices were sent. We did not intervene before the process completed, while our email service was malfunctioning. That explains why we did not stop the process in time. It does not explain why OVHcloud's systems placed the project into that process in the first place.

  1. 03 September 2025 — Support later reported suspension.

    Support said the service was suspended because of an existing debt. Open the dated moment ↗

  2. 03 October 2025 — Support later reported completed deletion.

    Support said the deletion task had completed and that the data was wiped in the process. Open the dated moment ↗

  3. 22 November 2025 — the first explanation arrived.

    Support said the Public Cloud project had been terminated for non-payment and could not be recovered. Open the exact source moment ↗

This was not presented to us as the failure of one disk, one VM, or one storage volume. OVHcloud Support said the entire Public Cloud project had been terminated.

05 / The contradiction

Three support statements. One project. No coherent reconciliation.

These are OVHcloud Support's words inside ticket CS12897544 — not mine. Open the redacted records and read the surrounding messages yourself.

22 Nov 2025 · First explanation
“This project has been terminated due to no payments made on your end.”
“The issue was not related to your payment.”
OVHcloud Support 26 Nov 2025 · ST-02
Redacted facsimile of the OVHcloud support ticket page containing the statement that the issue was not related to payment Open complete redacted record ↗
“The recent issue was indeed our responsibility.”
OVHcloud Support 28 Nov 2025 · ST-03
Redacted facsimile of the OVHcloud support ticket page containing the statement that the recent issue was OVHcloud's responsibility Open complete redacted record ↗
What I am not claiming

I am not declaring these lines a legal admission; that is for counsel or a tribunal. I am saying that OVHcloud first blamed non-payment, later separated the issue from our payment, then described the recent issue as its responsibility — and that Claims later denied liability. Those positions still need one coherent explanation.

06 / The blast radius

A backup inside the same project is not an independent backup.

I learned that in the most expensive way available. If your recovery copy shares the same administrative blast radius, it is not a recovery plan. Please learn it for free.

Provider-confirmed

Project terminated, deletion task completed, data wiped in the process, and the project could not be reactivated.

Internally documented

Infrastructure categories, research programmes, dataset types, software components, and recovery topology.

UrbanBlue estimate

Data volume, record counts, field-recollection work, reconstruction effort, and financial impact.

Everything in this table is an UrbanBlue estimate
7–8 TB
proprietary scientific data
40–50
wastewater treatment plants represented
50–55M
raw microscopy images
~200K
expert-annotated images
~12M
soft-sensor time-series points
Years
of experiments, models, embeddings, and weights

These are UrbanBlue's internal scale estimates. They are not provider-confirmed quantities or adjudicated damages.

07 / Who owns what

My mistake explains why the loss was total. Not why the project was deleted.

Two columns. I filled in the left one first, and I published it before I asked OVHcloud for anything.

07A · What I got wrong

I trusted one provider too much.

  • No sufficiently independent off-provider recovery copy.
  • Critical data and recovery copies shared the same administrative failure domain.
  • We did not intervene before the automated process completed, while our email service was malfunctioning.
  • I assumed an entire project would not be terminated without an effective safeguard or a recoverable escalation path.
Please do not repeat this. I already paid for the lesson.
07B · What remains unresolved

My mistake is not a free pass.

  • Explain why the suspension and deletion workflow began.
  • Reconcile the conflicting billing treatment.
  • Reconcile “non-payment” with “not related to your payment.”
  • Define what “indeed our responsibility” referred to.
  • Explain what deletion safeguards, review controls, or reconciliation checks applied before permanent deletion.
The notices existed. The premise behind them remains unresolved.
OVHcloud's recorded position

OVHcloud says we chose how to store the data, and that backups, business continuity, and disaster recovery were our responsibility. On that basis, OVHcloud denied liability for the loss and related damages.

That is fair, and I have said so on this page before saying anything else. Our architecture explains the blast radius. It does not explain why the deletion process began under a payment explanation OVHcloud later contradicted.

08 / Every door

We could find our name in their marketing. We could not find an owner for the incident.

Support. Claims. Legal. Startup Program. Regional inboxes. Named executives. Two formal notice rounds, delivered to four addresses across India and France. Some people replied, and one person genuinely helped. None of it produced a coherent explanation or a committed resolution path.

02
support and claims tickets
07
documented route types pursued
02 / 04
formal notice rounds / tracked deliveries
00
committed resolution timelines
Publication-safe facsimile of an OVHcloud Startup Program lead's LinkedIn post naming UrbanBlue Open public-post facsimile ↗

“Keep an eye on these companies.”

OVHcloud employees publicly named UrbanBlue as a Startup Program company and described our work as real-time AI-powered microbial analysis for industrial wastewater treatment. The posts were promotion, not a warranty. The contrast still matters.

  1. Support engaged.

    It supplied the initial explanation, the later payment and responsibility statements, and the Claims handoff.

  2. One Startup Program contact genuinely helped.

    She took calls and helped us find a working Legal route.

  3. Legal acknowledged receipt.

    No responsible owner or committed timetable followed in the produced thread.

  4. Formal notices were delivered.

    Two rounds reached addresses in India and France.

  5. The exported case now says Closed.

    Priority 4 — Low, with no visible closure rationale.

I am not attacking the employee who tried to help me. I am documenting the system that left both of us without a working decision path.

09 / The offer and the end state

Claims proposed €700 cash. Support said the project could not be reactivated.

Claims first denied liability and described compensation as a commercial gesture. On 12 February 2026, it proposed two options. Neither was tied to an assessment of the deleted assets or the reconstruction work required.

Proposal recorded in the claims ticket

€700

cash, excluding tax

€4,200

OVHcloud Money Pot, excluding tax

What rebuilding would actually take

Credits cannot recreate field samples.

They cannot recreate expert labels, historical plant data, or lost model lineage either. Reconstruction means:

  • Field re-sampling
  • Microscopy regeneration
  • Expert annotation
  • Time-series reconstruction
  • ML redevelopment and validation
July 2026 export · Status: Closed

Ticket metadata shows an update on 18 May 2026. The export does not identify who closed the case, the exact closure time, or a closure rationale. I therefore do not present “Closed” as a reasoned final decision.

The proposal figures are presented as recorded in the claims correspondence and may be disputed by OVHcloud. My reconstruction record is preliminary, and its line-item arithmetic is still being reconciled. This page therefore does not present its aggregate estimate as an adjudicated or final damages figure.

A blue and gold sunset over the sea, photographed during the founder's June 2026 trip
June 2026 — after the private routes had run out

10 / Why I built this

I tried to resolve it in private. Then I decided to make the record public.

Firsthand account

I took these photographs on a June 2026 trip after a brutally hard year. I was trying to enjoy the sunset and not think about OVHcloud. One question would not leave me alone: after months of private escalation, what exactly was I still waiting for?

The loss was not newly discovered. The deletion was not new. The silence was. What changed was that the record had stopped moving. Support, Claims, Legal, Startup Program contacts, executive outreach, and formal notices had produced no coherent reconciliation and no committed resolution path. The exported case now said Closed.

Before speaking publicly, I did the part that had to come first. I accepted that our recovery architecture was inadequate and that we failed to intervene before the automated process completed. I rebuilt the chronology, redacted the source records, and separated OVHcloud's statements from our own estimates and conclusions.

Why now?

Because waiting had stopped producing answers. Because every reasonable private route had been tried. Because silence was beginning to make an unresolved incident look resolved.

Publication was not the first step. It is what remained after the private process had run its course.

I could not buy equal power. Fine. I could build a public record that nobody has to take on faith.

So I am publishing now. Not because the anger is new, and not because I expect a website to replace a legal process. I am publishing because the private process exhausted itself while the central contradictions remained.

This is not a court judgment, and I am not asking for a mob. I am asking people to inspect the documents, other founders to learn from our mistakes, and OVHcloud to provide the coherent explanation the private process never produced.

— Akash Singh, founder
An intense orange sunset over the sea with a fishing boat in silhouette
June 2026 — the same trip, the moment waiting stopped making sense

11 / The ask

Five questions, and a standing right of reply.

I am not asking for sympathy. I am asking for a reconciliation of a record that currently contradicts itself.

To OVHcloud
  1. Why did the suspension and deletion workflow begin?
  2. How is the April billing treatment reconciled with the August pending notice?
  3. How is “no payments made on your end” reconciled with “not related to your payment”?
  4. What did “indeed our responsibility” refer to?
  5. What safeguards, review controls, or reconciliation checks applied before permanent deletion?
To other founders

Your backup is only a backup if it survives your account being wrong about you. Not a different region. Not a different bucket. A different administrative blast radius, with credentials your primary provider does not control.

Test the restore. Read the suspension policy for your provider before you need it. Make sure the address on your billing account is one a human actually reads.

Right of reply

OVHcloud: if I got something wrong, show me.

Identify the sentence. Provide the supporting record. State the correction. I will publish a substantive, documented response next to the claim it disputes — not bury it in a footnote, and not rewrite history to make myself look better.

Dedicated reply route: akash.singh@urbanbluetech.com. A substantive response from a verifiable OVHcloud address will be published in full or linked beside the disputed claim, subject only to necessary privacy redactions.

12 / The detailed record

The story stops here. The receipts start.

The outreach ledger, 54 dated moments, and the source register are on one page. Each timeline citation opens only the page or pages supporting that moment — not an entire ticket followed by a scavenger hunt.

  • ST-01 and the Claims ticket are released only as moment-specific page extracts.
  • The 77-page second-notice bundle is reduced to the actual six-page notice.
  • The WhatsApp messages are withheld to protect the other participant's privacy.

13 / What remains

I still build.

UrbanBlue's first product did not become the repeatable business we hoped for. The cloud project is gone. The work, the lessons, and the impulse to build are not.

I still believe industrial AI has enormous potential. I still believe difficult physical systems can become more observable, more efficient, and more sustainable through better engineering.

This record exists because I refuse to pretend this incident never happened. It also exists because I refuse to let the incident write the ending. I hope OVHcloud eventually provides the explanation I spent months asking for. Whether it does or not, this record stays public.

The project was deleted. The builder was not.

Public log · 26 Aug 2026

Full design revamp. Every load-bearing statement now carries a visible claim status — provider-stated, my failure, UrbanBlue estimate, firsthand account, or unresolved — so a reader can see at a glance what is OVHcloud's word, what is documented record, and what is mine. The billing sequence and the suspension/deletion sequence are merged into one provider-record chapter, a ninety-second summary opens the page, and the five open questions are now stated directly instead of implied.