On July 01, 2020, American multinational private equity company Carlyle Group has decided to acquire about 25% stake in India’s second largest telecom company Bharti Airtl’s data centre business –Nxtra Data Ltd– for $235 million (about ₹1,780 crore) through a company called Comfort Investments II, which is an affiliated entity of CAP V Mauritius Ltd., an investment fund managed and advised by affiliated firms of the Carlyle.
At the same time, Airtel will continue to hold the remaining 75 % stake.
Post the acquisition:
With this deal, the valuation of ‘Nextra’ is expected to be $ 1.2 billion, which is more than Rs 9,084 crore.
Key Points:
i.The deal, which helps Airtel to open up massive growth opportunities for data centers to accelerate the investment , is yet to get regulatory approval, including permission from the Competition Commission of India (CCI).
ii.Carlyle has prior experience in data centre ownership through investments in Coresite in the US & this transaction will help take advantage of the potential growth of data centers in India.
About Nxtra Data Ltd:
Location– New Delhi
Nextra has 10 large data centres and more than 120 edge data centres across the country. They provide services of co-location services, cloud infrastructure, managed hosting, data backup, disaster recovery and remote infrastructure management to customers.
About Bharti Airtel:
Headquarters – New Delhi
MD & CEO (India and South Asia)– Gopal Vittal
About Carlyle Group:
Headquarters– Washington, D.C., United States
Managing Director of Carlyle India Advisors Private Limited– Neeraj Bharadwaj
