[Group Request] Create a new group

### City or location name for your CNCG

Cloud Native Puducherry

### What country do you want to start your community group in?

India

### Tell us about yourself. List your name, email, company, GitHub URL, LinkedIn URL, CNCF Slack workspace name (or if you need to be invited), and your required profile link on community.cncf.io

My name is Suraj D, a DevOps and Platform Engineer based in the Chennai-Puducherry region, India. I currently work at GoCharting, where I focus on Kubernetes, Crossplane and AWS infrastructure. I hold a CKA certification and have 4+ years of experience in the DevOps and platform engineering space.

I have spoken at various community events across South India, covering topics like Kubernetes, Python, Resiliency, Multitenancy, AIOps and Platform Engineering. The events include [CNCF Chennai](https://ocgroups.dev/cncf/group/96ne96f/event/kdh466v), [CNCF Hyderabad](https://hyderabad.cncg.in/), [ChennaiPy Conference](https://chennaipy.org/meetups/mom/2025/10/25/), [OpenSearch Project Chennai](https://www.meetup.com/opensearch-project-chennai/events/313691272/?eventOrigin=group_past_events), [AWS Student Community Day](https://konfhub.com/aws-scd-2026-chennai) and [FromDevtoOps](https://fromdevtoops.org/events/fromdevtoops-community-meetup-january-31-2026/). I write about these topics on Medium and Hashnode as well.

I want to start **Cloud Native Puducherry** because there is no cloud native community presence in the city right now, and there are engineers there who would benefit from one. My plan is to run regular in-person meetups, bring in speakers from the broader Tamil Nadu community, and keep the content vendor neutral and accessible to engineers at different levels.

Email: [suraj2001dev@gmail.com](mailto:suraj2001dev@gmail.com)
Company Name: GoCharting
GitHub: https://github.com/Suraj01Dev
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/surajdevanand
CNCF Slack: I need an invitation to join the CNCF Slack workspace.
community.cncf.io profile: https://community2.cncf.io/u/mndxmk/#/about

### Inclusive

- [x] I/We agree. To ensure this, I/we have recently completed the [Inclusive Open Source Community Orientation (LFC102) course](https://training.linuxfoundation.org/training/inclusive-open-source-community-orientation-lfc102/)

### Link to your LFC102 Credly Badge

https://www.credly.com/badges/07ef5a88-317b-4c42-b01c-f8df5a4c0d61/public_url

### Tell us about your co-organizer. List their name, email, company, GitHub URL, LinkedIn URL, CNCF Slack workspace name (or if they need to be invited), and their required profile link on community.cncf.io

Labeeq is a Computer Science Engineering student based in Chennai-Puducherry region in [Sathyabama Institute of Science & Technology](https://www.linkedin.com/school/15117409/), India. He has been actively involved in the cloud and developer community, with a strong focus on AWS, cloud computing and emerging technologies.

He leads the AWS Cloud Club at Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology, where he has been involved in building and managing a student developer community and creating opportunities for students to learn, collaborate and connect with industry professionals.

One of his key achievements has been organising and managing AWS Student Community Day, Chennai 2026, a large-scale student-led community event that brought together 800+ participants, 15+ speakers, multiple AWS Cloud Clubs and the wider AWS community. He was involved in community coordination, speaker and partner management, event planning, outreach, logistics and on-ground execution. Through this experience, he has developed hands-on skills in community management, event leadership, stakeholder coordination, speaker management, technical event planning and building developer communities at scale.

Labeeq wants to co-organise Cloud Native Puducherry because there is no cloud native community presence in the city right now, and there are engineers there who would benefit from one. His plan is to run regular in-person meetups, bring in speakers from the broader Tamil Nadu community and keep the content vendor neutral and accessible to engineers at different levels.

Email: [iamlabeeq@gmail.com](mailto:iamlabeeq@gmail.com)
GitHub: https://github.com/MohamedAhmed
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamlabeeq
**CNCF Slack: Needs an invitation to join the CNCF Slack workspace.**
community.cncf.io profile: https://community2.cncf.io/u/mp57ug/#/about

### Link to your co-organizers LFC102 Credly Badge

https://www.credly.com/badges/57c2becc-96f2-44a9-83ad-c32069e652ba/public_url

### Tell us about your co-organizer. List their name, email, company, GitHub URL, LinkedIn URL, CNCF Slack workspace name (or if they need to be invited), and their required profile link on community.cncf.io

Praveen is a Site Reliability Engineer at ADP India with over 4 years of experience across DevOps and SRE roles. He has worked with Docker, Kubernetes, Prometheus and a range of infrastructure tools across his time at ADP and Finspot Technologies. His background covers deployment troubleshooting, server monitoring, virtualisation and working with cloud native tooling in production environments. He is based in Chennai-Puducherry region and brings solid hands-on infrastructure experience to the co-organiser team.

Email: praveennatarajan0404@gmail.com
GitHub: https://github.com/praveennatarajan0404
Company: ADP India
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/praveen-n-45252a1ba/
**CNCF Slack: Needs an invitation to join the CNCF Slack workspace.**
community.cncf.io profile: https://community2.cncf.io/u/m4qxb8/#/about

### Link to your co-organizers LFC102 Credly Badge

https://www.credly.com/badges/b4bec17c-ab0d-4e75-9087-24552b793013

### If you already run a meetup, please link it here

_No response_

### What is your mission statement or objective for this new group?

My mission is to build a cloud native community in Puducherry that goes beyond regular meetups and actually helps **people grow technically.**

Puducherry has **18 engineering colleges including a dedicated women's engineering institution, STPI backed infrastructure and established tech companies running cloud workloads.** There is no shortage of engineers and students here who are working with or learning Kubernetes, AWS and DevOps tools. What is missing is a dedicated space to go deep on cloud native technology together.

Over the past year I have been working toward this, preparing for CNCF certifications, speaking at communities across South India and learning what makes a technical community genuinely useful. Cloud Native Puducherry is where I put that experience to work.

Regular talks are the foundation. Every meetup will feature vendor neutral technical sessions covering topics across the cloud native landscape, from Kubernetes and platform engineering to observability, security and emerging CNCF projects. Speakers will come from the local community as well as the broader Tamil Nadu and South India network.

Alongside the talks, the group will run **structured study groups focused on CNCF certifications like CKA, CKAD and CKS**. These sessions will include mock exams, knowledge transfer sessions and open discussions where the same concept is explored from multiple angles with live demos. The focus will always be on understanding how things work from the ground up, not surface level overviews.

The goal is a community that is open to everyone, from students just starting with Kubernetes to working engineers preparing for certifications, vendor neutral, technically focused and free to attend.

### Code of Conduct

- [x] I/We agree to follow the [CNCF Code of Conduct](https://github.com/cncf/foundation/blob/main/code-of-conduct.md)

### Where organizers reside

- [x] I/We confirm I/we am/are local to, or live near, the city of the above-proposed group.

### Organizers' companies/affiliations

- [x] I/We agree that if there is more than one organizer now or onboarded in the future, the majority will come from different companies.

### Vendor neutral

- [x] I/We have read what [vendor neutrality means](https://contribute.cncf.io/maintainers/community/vendor-neutrality/) and agree that the main content of our meetups will remain vendor-neutral.

### Agree to use CNCG branding

- [x] I/We agree to use the CNCG logo in my/our group and social branding.

### Registration through CNCF platforms

- [x] I/We agree to host free registration on the main CNCF platform.

### Remain an active group

- [x] I/We agree to have a meetup at least once every 90 days, or else communicate the reasoning for upcoming inactivity.

### Collaboration with other groups

- [x] I/We acknowledge CNCF's right to approve additional groups in my area based on this criteria.

### Aim to have a diverse representation of speakers in your meetups

- [x] I/We will do our best to host diverse speakers throughout the year.

Start with the completed application in issue #823 and review the linked CNCF requirements for inclusive participation, vendor neutrality, branding, registration, and group activity. Verify the organizer and co-organizer details, certifications, location, and mission statement; done means the request has been reviewed and the required next steps are recorded.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.