Digital Realty and Brookfield Infrastructure have formed a joint venture to build and operate data centres in India. The 50:50 venture will operate under the brand name BAM Digital Realty.
BAM Digital Realty intends to acquire land parcels in “multiple Indian metros” for the development of data centre campuses to support the needs of global hyperscale service providers, as well as international and local enterprises. The joint venture expects to design, build and operate sustainable facilities, drawing upon the firms’ broader commitments to sustainable operations, including carbon reduction initiatives.
Brookfield Infrastructure’s existing asset portfolio in India includes 139,000 operational telecom wireless towers, which it intends to expand to 175,000 over the medium term.
“India is a rapidly emerging data centre market and offers a bright future, with accelerating adoption of digital business models among a population that recognises the role of technology for future economic development,” said Digital Realty CEO Bill Stein. “Our existing partnership with Brookfield [the jointly-owned Ascenty platform] across Latin America has already delivered long-term value to our customers, with over 250MW of IT load capacity in Brazil, Chile and Mexico either fully built out or currently under construction,” said Stein.
Arpit Agrawal, Managing Director and Head of India & Middle East at Brookfield Infrastructure, said: “Through the development of a high-quality, multi-city, India-focused data centre platform, we believe BAM Digital Realty is well positioned to play a meaningful role in addressing the large and growing data demand in the country and to offer a differentiated solution to customers.”
