Darshita Jain, Pune
Reliance Industries has bought a 33.33 percent share in Brookfield Infrastructure and Digital Realty’s joint venture for the development of data centers in India. RIL will invest Rs. 378 crores in each of the five special purpose entities established by the joint venture company Mercury Holdings SG Pte Ltd.
The JV is currently building data centers at prominent sites in Chennai and Mumbai. By the end of 2023, a 20-MW greenfield data center for the JV is expected to be built on a 100-MW campus in Chennai. The JV has announced the acquisition of 2.15 acres of land in Mumbai for the construction of a 40 MW data center. The JV will be branded as ‘Digital Connexion: A Brookfield, Jio, and Digital Realty Company,’ with RIL as an equal partner.
Reliance has also agreed to invest further funds in equity and debt securities of Indian SPVs and any new SPVs established by Mercury India SG FDI Pte Ltd, up to a total of $622 million. Jio Platforms Limited CEO Kiran Thomas stated, “We are thrilled to work with Digital Realty, one of the world’s most creative data center businesses, and with Brookfield, our current and valued partner. The collaboration will enable us to provide our enterprise and small and medium-sized business clients with cutting-edge, plug-and-play solutions supplied from the cloud, guide their digital transformation, and increase their competitiveness and efficiency.”
With more than 300 data centers spread across 27 countries, Digital Realty Trust, Inc. offers cloud and carrier-neutral data center, co-location, and connectivity solutions on a worldwide scale. According to a press release, the JV’s data centers will take advantage of Digital Realty’s sector-leading energy-efficient data center platform design and operating procedures, Brookfield’s in-depth understanding of the Indian infrastructure market, Jio’s enormous digital ecosystem, and extremely strong enterprise relationships.
Many large corporations have either launched new data center projects in India over the past few years or have diversified to incorporate it as a new line of business, including Microsoft, Google, LTI, Yotta Infrastructure of the Hiranandani Group, NTT, Blackstone, and the Adani Group.
The digitization that is occurring in all aspects of Indian life is supported by data centers, according to Arpit Agrawal, managing director and head of infrastructure for India and the Middle East at Brookfield. We look forward to working with Reliance and Digital Realty to offer Indian and international corporations the finest solutions for their digital transformation needs.
Local storage is becoming more and more important due to India’s expanding data consumption, which has increased demand for data centers. In the preceding three years, the Indian data center market has grown by 48%, from 540 MW in 2019 to more than 800 MW in 2022. Over the next ten years, developers must build a 300 MW pipeline, which will cost $23 billion in capital expenditures. By building, owning, and managing carrier- and cloud-neutral data centers of institutional standard across India, Digital Realty, a joint venture with Digital Realty, seeks to accelerate the development of Digital India.