Bharti Airtel has announced a $1 billion investment in Nxtra Data Limited, its data centre subsidiary, from Alpha Wave Global, Carlyle and Anchorage Capital through their affiliates. Airtel will also participate in the round, which is expected to value Nxtra at around $3.1 billion post-closing.

Under the agreement, Alpha Wave Global will invest $435 million, Carlyle $240 million and Anchorage Capital $35 million, while the remaining amount will be infused by Airtel. The final shareholding of investors will be subject to post-closing adjustments. Airtel will continue to retain a controlling stake in Nxtra. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals in India.

Nxtra, which claims to be the first data centre company in India to deploy AI at scale for predictive maintenance, energy efficiency and automated operations, plans to use the fresh capital to accelerate its expansion. The company intends to scale its infrastructure and broaden its service offerings to meet rising demand from enterprises, hyperscalers and government organisations.

India’s data centre market is witnessing rapid growth due to accelerating digital adoption, increasing cloud usage and expanding hyperscaler requirements. A Savills India report projects the sector to grow at a CAGR of about 21 per cent between 2024 and 2030, reaching nearly 3,400 MW of IT capacity.

“At Nxtra, we have built one of India’s most advanced and sustainable data center networks,” said Gopal Vittal, Executive Vice Chairman, Airtel. “With ~300 MW capacity today, we aim to scale to 1 GW in the next few years, targeting ~25 per cent market share.”

Kapil Modi, Partner at Carlyle India Advisors, said Nxtra is well-positioned to benefit from India’s long-term digital infrastructure growth.

Rick Gerson, Co-Founder & CIO, Alpha Wave Global, said the firm is excited to partner with the Bharti Group as Nxtra scales to become a leading data centre business in India.

Headquartered in New Delhi, Nxtra currently operates 14 large core data centres and over 120 edge facilities nationwide, offering co-location, cloud infrastructure, managed hosting, data backup, disaster recovery and edge computing services. The company has a major facility in Pune and is developing additional AI-ready campuses in Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata.