Reliance Industries on Monday announced that it is entering into an agreement with Brookfield Infrastructure and Digital Realty to invest in their special purpose vehicles (SPV) set up for developing data centers in India. Per the deal, RIL will hold a 33.33 per cent stake in each of the Indian SPVs and become an equal partner, the company said in a regulatory filing.
Digital Realty is the provider of cloud and carrier-neutral data center, colocation and interconnection solutions globally with 300+ data centers across 27 countries. The company has a joint venture with Brookfield Infrastructure. Brookfield Infrastructure develops high quality, highly-connected, scalable data centers for enterprises and digital services companies in India. RIL will become an equal partner in the JV, which will be branded as ‘Digital Connexion: A Brookfield, Jio and Digital Realty Company’.
Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas acted as legal advisors, and Deloitte, Haskins & Sells LLP acted as accounting and tax diligence advisor to RIL. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to complete in around 3 months, the company informed.
The joint venture is currently developing data centers in Chennai and Mumbai. Its first 20 megawatt (MW) greenfield data center (MAA10), on a 100 MW campus in Chennai, is expected to be completed by the end of 2023. It has also recently announced the acquisition of a 2.15 acres of land in Mumbai to build a 40MW data center. “The JV will be well positioned to serve global and local enterprises, SMBs and the vibrant startups of India, for their cloud and colocation requirements as they move their compute resources on the cloud and off-premise,” said RIL.
The data centers developed by the JV will leverage Digital Realty’s energy-efficient data center platform design and operating procedures, Pervasive Data Center Architecture (PDx®) approach and relationships with global customers, Brookfield’s knowledge of the Indian infrastructure market, and Jio’s digital and connectivity ecosystem and very strong enterprise relationships with an existing client base of 80 per cent of large named private enterprises in India.
Kiran Thomas, CEO, Jio Platforms Limited, said, “We are excited to partner with Digital Realty, one of the most innovative data center companies globally and with Brookfield, our existing and trusted partner. The partnership will help us serve our enterprise and SMB clients with cutting-edge, plug-and-play solutions delivered from the cloud and lead their digital transformation and make them more competitive and efficient. Kiran Thomas also thanked the Indian government for “granting infrastructure status to data centers and for creating a favorable ecosystem for their development and operations”, critical for becoming a $1 trillion digital economy by 2025. Data center capacity in India is expected to increase multi-fold over the next few years.
Arpit Agrawal, Managing Director, Head of Infrastructure, India & Middle East, Brookfield, said, “We are very pleased to expand our existing partnership with Reliance and add their deep expertise in the Indian telecom, tech and data landscape to the platform.”
Serene Nah, Managing Director and Head of Asia Pacific, Digital Realty, said, “This joint venture brings together three global leaders in digital infrastructure to accelerate Digital India by developing, owning and operating institutional quality carrier-and cloud neutral data centers across India.”