New Delhi, March 31: Bharti Airtel on Tuesday announced a US$1 billion investment in its data center subsidiary Nxtra Data Limited, with participation from Alpha Wave Global, Carlyle and Anchorage Capital, to expand Nxtra’s network across India and accelerate growth.
Under the agreement, Alpha Wave Global will invest US$435 million, Carlyle US$240 million and Anchorage Capital US$35 million, while the remaining amount will be infused by Airtel. Airtel will retain a controlling stake in Nxtra. The final shareholding of investors will be subject to post-closing adjustments. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals in India.
Nxtra said it plans to deploy the proceeds to scale its infrastructure and broaden its services portfolio to meet demand from enterprises, hyperscalers and government organisations. The company currently operates about 300 MW of capacity and aims to scale to 1 GW over the next few years, targeting a market share of around 25 percent, according to Gopal Vittal, Executive Vice Chairman of Airtel.
Headquartered in New Delhi, Nxtra operates 14 core data centers and more than 120 edge facilities across India. Its services include co-location, cloud infrastructure, managed hosting, data backup, disaster recovery and edge computing. The company has a facility in Pune and is developing AI-ready campuses in Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata. It has also partnered with Google to build a gigawatt-scale AI data center campus backed by a US$15 billion investment.
The announcement comes amid expansion in India’s data center sector, driven by enterprise digitalisation, cloud adoption and demand from hyperscalers. According to a Savills India report cited by the company, the country’s data center market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of around 21 percent between 2024 and 2030, reaching nearly 3,400 MW of IT capacity.
Kapil Modi, Partner at Carlyle India Advisors, said the firm would continue to work with Airtel and Nxtra’s management to expand the platform. Rick Gerson, Co-Founder and CIO of Alpha Wave Global, said the investment aligns with the firm’s focus on AI-driven businesses. Navroz D. Udwadia, Co-Founder of Alpha Wave Global, said India’s growing use of AI platforms is expected to increase demand for data center capacity.
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