India’s Bharti Airtel to invest $673m

Telecoms group Bharti Airtel  said on Thursday it will invest 50 billion rupees ($673 million) in expanding its data centre business to meet customer demand in and around India.

Airtel Business chief executive Ajay Chitkara said its Nxtra unit will make the investment by 2025, with plans to build a data centre economy across 80 Indian cities, adding that the move will triple its installed capacity to more than 400 MW.

“There is a huge potential and huge demand (for data centres) which is expected in the next three to four years time,” Chitkara told a virtual news conference.

Nxtra currently runs 10 large and 120 edge data centres, or smaller data processing facilities, across India and the expansion is part of a strategy by telcos to add new revenue streams to their business and lure enterprise clients who typically offer higher margins.