Carlyle to acquire about 25% stake in Airtel’s data centre business for about Rs 1,780 cr

The Carlyle Group will acquire about 25 per cent stake in Airtel's data centre business, Nxtra Data, for USD 235 million (about Rs 1,780 crore), the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

This will peg the enterprise valuation of Nxtra at USD 1.2 billion which is over Rs 9,084 crore.

On completion of the deal, Carlyle will hold about 25 per cent stake in the business with Airtel continuing to hold the remaining stake of about 75 per cent.

"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 an agreement under which Comfort Investments II will invest USD 235 million in Nxtra Data Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Airtel engaged in the data centre business," a Bharti Airtel statement said.

The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals, including nod from the Competition Commission of India.

Nxtra, which is headquartered in New Delhi, offers data centre services to leading Indian and global enterprises, start-ups, small and medium businesses and governments.

"Nxtra's nation-wide portfolio of 10 large data centres and more than 120 edge data centres provides customers with co-location services, cloud infrastructure, managed hosting, data backup, disaster recovery, and remote infrastructure management," the statement added.

It said that India is witnessing a considerable surge in demand for secure data centres as businesses undertake digital transformation and consumer demand for digital services continues to increase.

"The expansion of hyperscalers across the region following the government's directive on data localisation is propelling a lot of this demand, with other market drivers including the growth in user data and increase in cloud penetration." it said.

Nxtra is building multiple large data centres to capture the significant growth opportunities in the country.