Airtel’s Nextra begins work on Kolkata hyper-scale centre

Nxtra Data, a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel, has started the construction of its new hyper-scale data centre in Kolkata. The company will invest Rs 6 billion in developing of the largest data centre in East India. It will serve the underserved east and north-east Indian markets, along with the SAARC countries, and fulfil the growing needs of enterprises and global cloud players. The 25 MW facility will come up in New Town, Kolkata and will be fully operational by 2024. The new centre will source clean energy for running its operations. It will be Nxtra's first large-scale facility in East India, adding to its existing 12 large and 120 edge facilities across India. The new centre will further cement Nxtra's position as the nation's largest network of data centres. ‘Nxtra by Airtel’ will invest over Rs 50 billion over the next four years to expand its capacity threefold to over 400 MW. The company has already invested and partnered with eight organisations to source more than 180,000 MWh of renewable energy. Nxtra aims to achieve net zero by 2031. “Nxtra and Airtel are delighted to partner West Bengal in its digital-first economy agenda. We are investing extensively on green energy and our state-of-the-art, carrier-neutral, hyper-scale Kolkata data centre will run on renewable source of energy,” said Rajesh Tapadia, executive director and chief operating officer, Nxtra by Airtel. See also: Amazon Data Services buys Kalpataru's 54-acre plot for Rs 18.7 billionUser-friendly proactivity to avoid overruns