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US-based Carlyle Group to acquire about 25% stake in Bharti Airtel’s data centre business

The US-based global investment firm Carlyle Group will pick up about 25 percent stake in Nxtra Data Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bharti Airtel engaged in the data centre business, for USD 235 million.

Sources said Airtel will continue to hold the remaining stake of approximately 75 percent. The telecom giant is also likely to raise its scale in the ongoing data sale business.

The post-money enterprise valuation of Nxtra is approximately $1.2 billion and Carlyle will hold a stake of approximately 25 percent in the business after the completion of the deal. The transaction is subject to the necessary regulatory approvals.

“Rapid digitization has opened up a massive growth opportunity for data centres in India and we plan to accelerate our investments to become a major player in this segment,” said Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO (India and South Asia), Bharti Airtel.

“India is set to become one of the largest markets in the world for digital services. Airtel, with its proven track record of solid execution and customer focus, is well-positioned to leverage the potential growth of data centres in India. We look forward to collaborating with Airtel to unlock the full potential of Nxtra,” said Neeraj Bharadwaj, MD of the Carlyle Asia Partners advisory team.

This is the third investment by the Washington-based Carlyle Group in two months as it had agreed to buy a stake in SeQuent Scientific Ltd in May followed by a 20% holding in Piramal Pharma Ltd. in June.

According to experts, the deal could give the telecom service provider an additional lever to bring in more capital in future.

It may be mentioned here that Nxtra offers secure data centre services to leading start-ups, hyperscalers, SMEs, and governments. Having a portfolio of 10 large data centres and over 120 edge data centres worldwide, Nxtra provides customers with cloud infrastructure, co-location services, managed hosting, remote infrastructure management, data backup, and disaster recovery.