US-based alternative investment firm Alpha Wave Global is leading a $1-billion (about Rs 9,400 crore) round of funding in Indian telecom operator Bharti Airtel Ltd’s data centre arm while existing private equity investor Carlyle is making an additional capital infusion.
Alpha Wave will invest $435 million in Nxtra Data Ltd and Carlyle will contribute $240 million, Bharti Airtel said in a statement.
Airtel itself will commit $290 million and retain a controlling stake in Nxtra. The company currently holds a 75.96% stake in the unit. Carlyle, which invested $235 million in Nxtra in 2020, holds the remaining.
The transaction is likely to value Nxtra at around $3.1 billion, up from $1.2 billion in 2020.
Airtel also said that Anchorage Capital will invest $35 million in Nxtra but didn’t disclose any other details.
Anchorage Capital is backed by the family office of The Great Eastern Shipping Company’s promoter Sheth family. Interestingly, Anchorage is also investing in Mumbai-based artificial intelligence infrastructure startup Neysa, VCCircle reported earlier this month after PE giant Blackstone agreed to invest $600 million in the company to take a majority stake.
Airtel, India’s second-largest mobile carrier by users, said that Nxtra would deploy the fresh capital to scale its infrastructure and broaden its portfolio of services, catering to the evolving needs of enterprises, hyperscalers, and government organisations across the country.
India’s data centre sector is growing rapidly, driven by accelerating digital transformation across enterprises, rising adoption of cloud services, and expanding demand from hyperscalers.
“At Nxtra, we have built one of India’s most advanced and sustainable data center networks, designed to meet the evolving needs of enterprises, hyperscalers, and government. With 300 MW capacity today, we aim to scale to 1 GW in the next few years, targeting 25% market share,” said Gopal Vittal, executive vice chairman at Airtel.
Headquartered in New Delhi, Nxtra operates 14 large core data centers and over 120 edge facilities across India, offering co-location, cloud infrastructure, managed hosting, data backup, disaster recovery, and edge computing services. It has a state-of-the-art facility in Pune and is developing additional AI-ready campuses in Chennai, Mumbai, and Kolkata. Nxtra recently partnered with Google to build a gigawatt-scale AI data center campus, backed by a $15-billion investment.
“India has an immense AI opportunity ahead of it — Indians already meaningfully interact with and on Chat GPT, Claude and other AI platforms. As such India is set to see its data center capacity grow meaningfully to keep up with hyperscaler and LLM demand," said Navroz D. Udwadia, co-founder at Alpha Wave Global.
