Bharti Airtel plans Rs 5,000 cr investment in data centre business

Bharti Airtel is planning to invest Rs 5,000 crore in its data centre business in 3-4 years to triple its capacity. The company will scale up its capacity through Nxtra by Airtel.

The company believes that the data centre business could grow a $4 billion market in four years. Currently, Nxtra operates ten large and 120 edge data centres across India.

It said that the company plans to expand its business, focusing on providing the requirements of India's digital economy. Nxtra by Airtel plans to be at the forefront of this growth plan and invest Rs 5,000 crore by 2025 to scale up its network. It will include the development of new data centre parks in major metropolitan cities. After the investment, Nxtra can triple its capacity to over 400 MW to meet the increasing demand and consolidate its network leadership.

The investment will witness the addition of seven hyper-scale data centre campuses. It will not only cater for the growing demand in India but also in neighbouring countries like Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh etc. The company told the media that cloud adoption, internet penetration, growing economy, 5G technology and government initiatives are the major data centre demand.

Director and CEO of Bharti Airtel, Ajay Chitkara, said that India could become a data hub in future with the SAARC South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries shifting their workload to India.

Airtel has planned to transform 50% of its unit into green power to reduce carbon emissions. Nxtra is scaling up its green energy for data centres and aims to reduce 50% power requirements through renewable energy sources as a part of Airtel's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target.

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