- Friday, April 19, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
TELECOM giant Bharti Airtel on Thursday (30) said it will invest Rs 50 billion (£500 million) in expanding its data-centre business to meet customers’ demand in and around India.
Airtel Business chief executive Ajay Chitkara informed that its Nxtra unit will make the investment by the year 2025, with plans to build a data-centre economy across 80 Indian cities. He added that the move will increase its installed capacity by three times to more than 400 Megawatt.
“There is a huge potential and huge demand (for data centres) which is expected in the next three to four years time,” Chitkara said in a virtual news conference.
Nxtra at the moment runs 10 large and 120 edge data centres or small data-processing facilities across India. The expansion plan is part of a strategy by telcos to add new revenue streams to their business and attract enterprise clients who offer bigger margins.
The business plan also surfaces at a time when the traditional voice services face new competition from free calls on apps like Facebook, WhatsApp and Signal.
Last year, an affiliate of American private equity group Carlyle bought a 2.5 per cent stake in Nxtra. Airtel still owns 75 per cent.
In 2019, Airtel’s rival Reliance Jio, which is controlled by Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, entered an alliance with Microsoft to build data centres across India and this year, it has come together with Google to boost its enterprise and consumer offerings ahead of launching 5G services.
Airtel has also said that Nxtra will increase the use of green energy for its data centres, eyeing to source 50 per cent of its power requirements from renewable sources.
(With Reuters inputs)
