India is the world’s most populous country with over 1.4 billion people and is fast becoming the world’s most digitized society. The country’s mobile network operators serve around 1.15 billion subscribers, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India The top two MNOs, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, are rapidly expanding their 5G networks to cover the entire country by the end of the year. Data centers support broadband and mobile data connections. Ashish Arora, CEO of Nxtra by Airtel, the Bharti Airtel data center operating unit, discusses with Inside Towers the rapid data center growth in India and how his company is responding.
Arora says that data center developments in India reflect what is taking place in major markets around the world. Nxtra as an entity was started within Airtel nearly 10 years ago with the idea of developing a data center core competency distinct from Airtel’s mobile network competence.
The Indian IT market has dramatically scaled up because of the cloud. The country is on a very rapid digitization pace in every part of the economy. Arora says that there are thousands of pure digital startups that are completely native and rely only on cloud infrastructure. Such demand requires new-age data center facilities with a very high resilience, scalability, network peering, and green energy. Consequently, the market in India has completely shifted towards cloud and data centers. Data centers underlie cloud infrastructure either as a colocation site for public cloud or a dedicated facility for a private cloud.
Nxtra is benefiting both ways as this demand scales up. The company operates 12 large data centers, and 120 edge data centers with a capacity of around 200 MW. That’s a significant portion of India’s roughly total 650 MW data center capacity.
Nxtra addresses both hyperscale and enterprise markets. Global hyperscalers are rapidly expanding their cloud services in India. Arora explains, “We are partnering with them to provide the data center and they consume big chunks of what we have built and what we are building. We build the entire campus or entire building to their specifications, following global standards. These are large build-to-suit sites.”
To cater to India’s rapidly growing digital economy, Arora says that Nxtra has an aggressive growth plan. “We are looking at doubling our capacity from 200 to 400 MW in the next three years. We are in the building phase of six new data centers, adding the additional 200 MW for a total investment of $600-700 million. That’s the plan we have. We see India as a great growth story and we’re very bullish about it.”
Arora points out that one of the Nxtra’s competitive advantages over the other 15 data center players in the Indian market is its deep relationships with hyperscalers from their long-time partnerships with Airtel. Nxtra thinks it is in a very good position as a trusted, long-term player that complements what the hyperscalers are trying to do.
Nxtra has an advantage since Airtel is the largest B2B player in India with long-standing partnerships with most of the large enterprises. Airtel can offer enterprise customers a range of services including connectivity, data centers, IoT, Cloud and security. “We’re looking at creating some common products as the market evolves, especially around its data center, in a 360-degree relationship.”
India’s geography puts it in a unique position as a major junction for submarine cable networks that connects Europe to Asia. Arora says that in the next two years, at least four or five new large cable systems will be landing in India and it is well positioned as a data center hub between Europe and Asia.
By John Celentano, Inside Towers Business Editor
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