Airtel's data centre business to receive US$ 235 million from Carlyle Group
A joint statement by the two companies on Wednesday stated that US-based Carlyle Group will invest US$ 235 million in Airtel's data centre business, Nxtra Data. This would provide the global PE firm with an approximately 25 per cent stake while Airtel will hold the remaining stake of approximately 75 per cent. Nxtra's post-money enterprise valuation estimation is at US$ 1.2 billion. The statement further said that the transaction would require the necessary regulatory approvals, including approval from the Competition Commission of India.
Nxtra from Airtel has its headquarters in New Delhi, offering secure data centre services to prominent Indian and global enterprises, start-ups, hyperscalers, SMEs and governments. It has a wide portfolio of ten large data centres and over 120 edge data centres providing customers with cloud infrastructure, managed hosting, co-location services, disaster recovery, data backup and remote infrastructure management.
India has been observing a substantial increase in demand for secure data centres as businesses embark on digital transformation and consumer demand for digital services continues to rise. With an aim to leverage on these growth opportunities, the company is in the process of constructing several large data centres across the country. It has already commissioned a state-of-the-art data centre in Pune and is currently constructing more across Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. The proceeds of these funds go into the further scaling up of its infrastructure and offerings across the country.
Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO (India and South Asia) of Bharti Airtel, while speaking on the development said that rapid digitization opened up a massive growth opportunity for data centres in India and as a result, the company plans to accelerate investments to become a major player in this segment.
Bharti Airtel's stock was trading at Rs 565.85 at 9.25 am on Wednesday, up by 1.11 per cent or Rs 6.20 per share. The 52-week high is recorded at Rs 611.70 and the 52-week low is Rs 321.60 on BSE.