Bharti Airtel and Comfort Investments II, an affiliated entity of CAP V Mauritius Limited, an investment fund managed and advised by affiliated entities of The Carlyle Group today announced the investment of US$235 million in Nxtra Data Limited, a wholly owned Bharti Airtel subsidiary involved in the data center business.
Carlyle will be holding a 25% stake in Nxtra Data Limited post the completion of the transaction, which is subject to necessary regulatory approvals from the Competition Commission of India. Airtel will continue to hold a stake of 75% with Nxtra being valued at an enterprise value of US$1.2 billion.
Nxtra offers secure data center services to enterprises, SMEs, start ups, and governments. It has over 10 large data centers, and more than 120 edge data centers across the country. Nxtra continues to ramp up its presence with new data centers being build across Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata.
“At Airtel, we have built a robust data centre portfolio that is future ready and scalable. For us, the security and data privacy requirements of our customers are our top priorities, which we have established as a key differentiator for our data centre offerings. Rapid digitization has opened up a massive growth opportunity for data centres in India and we plan to accelerate our investments to become a major player in this segment. We are delighted to have Carlyle as a strategic partner in this exciting journey, particularly given their experience in this industry, and look forward to working with them.”
Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO (India and South Asia), Bharti Airtel
Neeraj Bharadwaj, Managing Director of the Carlyle Asia Partners advisory team, commented: “India is set to become one of the largest markets in the world for digital services. Airtel, with its proven track record of solid execution and customer focus, is well positioned to leverage the potential growth of data centres in India. We look forward to collaborating with Airtel to unlock the full potential of Nxtra.”
Greg Zeluck, Co-Head, Carlyle Asia Partners advisory team, added: “Airtel is a high quality partner in India with whom Carlyle executives have built a strong and constructive relationship with over many years. We are delighted to be collaborating on this together, and believe Airtel’s nation-wide network and strong governance coupled with Carlyle’s data centre experience and operational capabilities creates a compelling partnership that will help Nxtra to capture growing demand as data usage continues to surge.”
