Airtel data centre arm Nxtra looks to raise $1 billion
Mumbai: Bharti Airtel’s data centre arm Nxtra Data Ltd is planning to raise $1 billion to expand its data centre capacity to gigawatt scale and is set to rope in Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s investment vehicle Alpha Wave Global--backer of Anthropic, Open AI, Grok and SpaceX among others--as a new investor, said people aware of the matter.
The latest capital-raising round through a rights issue and a preferential allotment will also be supported by two existing shareholders and help Nxtra establish itself as a leader along with Reliance, Adani, Tata and Larsen & Toubro in India’s fast-growing digital infrastructure space. Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed is Abu Dhabi’s deputy ruler.
ALSO READ: AWS, Microsoft Azure may reroute West Asia data centre workload to India
Airtel and Carlyle are expected to put in $300 million each while Alpha Wave will enter as a new investor with $400 million. All the funds raised will be in the form of primary capital and coincides with Airtel’s efforts to co-build Google’s $15 billion gigawatt-scale AI hub and data centre complex in Visakhapatnam alongside the Adani Group. The complex will host Google’s TPUs (tensor processing units) for training and running large AI models. Both Airtel and Adani are Google’s infrastructure partners. Airtel’s contribution is centred primarily on connectivity and telecom infrastructure, including high-capacity fibre.
Carlyle declined to comment. Bharti and Alpha Wave didn’t respond to queries.
Airtel spun off its data centre business into Nxtra in 2020 and subsequently sold a 24.04% stake to Carlyle in 2021 for about $235 million, valuing the company at $1.2 billion at the time. Airtel has retained majority control, seeking external capital to scale the business.
Also Read: Data centres later, fix the power ‘grid’-lock first
ET reported in April 2025 that Alpha Wave Global was circling Nxtra Data to acquire a significant stake as Carlyle looked to monetise its five-year-old investment. It was competing with DigitalBridge Group to acquire Carlyle's 24.04% stake for Rs 5,125 crore ($600 million), valuing Nxtra at Rs 20,500 crore ($2.4 billion), ET had reported at the time. Carlyle, which was earlier thinking of exiting its investment, even ran a full stake-sale process. Since then it’s decided to double down on the investment to capitalise on fast-growing demand.
Nxtra operates one of India’s largest data centre networks--14 core centres and 120 edge centres in 65 cities. It has 12% market share and capacity of 120-130 MW across major cities such as Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and Noida. It’s targeting 25% market share over the next three to four years with a total capacity of 1 GW, Bharti Airtel executive vice chairman Gopal Vittal said in an earnings call last month. According to Airtel's FY25 annual report, Nxtra's net profit for the year was Rs 224.3 crore on annual revenue of Rs 2,078.5 crore. Current liabilities amounted to Rs 956.7 crore, while net cash inflows from operating activities were at Rs 772 crore in the year ended March 2025.
The plan is to list the company in a few years.
Demand for digital infrastructure fuelled by AI and regional data protection laws has unleashed a wave of investment in India’s data centre industry.
Global hyperscalers Microsoft, Amazon and Google as well as Indian conglomerates such as Reliance, Adani, Tata and L&T are set to invest more than $270 billion in the next five to seven years in the domestic data centre industry, taking total capacity to about 10 GW from 1.4 GW now. Supportive government policies, including a 20-year tax holiday for cloud companies as well as safe-harbour provisions, have also encouraged global companies to make long-term bets.
Mirroring the trend in the US, large Indian business houses such as Reliance, Adani and Tata have committed several billion dollars in capital expenditure to ramp up their sovereign AI infrastructure, green energy capacity and develop affordable AI applications. Tata Consultancy Services has tied up with TPG for a $2.1 billion joint venture to set up data centres. Last month, TCS signed a 1 GW data centre deal with OpenAI for local AI processing in India. Meanwhile, domestic data centre companies such as Sify Infinit Spaces and the Hiranandani Group’s Yotta Data Services are preparing public listings expected to raise $800-850 million.
From being one of the largest investors in the Indian startup ecosystem behind Lenskart, Dream 11, Dailyhunt, Off Business, Chaayos, Delhivery and Cred among others, Alpha Wave has pivoted since 2024 to make bets in old economy companies such as VLCC, seeds company Advanta, a subsidiary of UPL, and Haldiram’s. Once the Nxtra deal is completed, it will be the second time after VLCC that it will be co-investing with Carlyle.
Alpha Wave is one of the key investment vehicles of Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, who has a net worth of $1 trillion and is also UAE national security advisor.
The latest capital-raising round through a rights issue and a preferential allotment will also be supported by two existing shareholders and help Nxtra establish itself as a leader along with Reliance, Adani, Tata and Larsen & Toubro in India’s fast-growing digital infrastructure space. Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed is Abu Dhabi’s deputy ruler.
ALSO READ: AWS, Microsoft Azure may reroute West Asia data centre workload to India
Airtel and Carlyle are expected to put in $300 million each while Alpha Wave will enter as a new investor with $400 million. All the funds raised will be in the form of primary capital and coincides with Airtel’s efforts to co-build Google’s $15 billion gigawatt-scale AI hub and data centre complex in Visakhapatnam alongside the Adani Group. The complex will host Google’s TPUs (tensor processing units) for training and running large AI models. Both Airtel and Adani are Google’s infrastructure partners. Airtel’s contribution is centred primarily on connectivity and telecom infrastructure, including high-capacity fibre.
Airtel spun off its data centre business into Nxtra in 2020 and subsequently sold a 24.04% stake to Carlyle in 2021 for about $235 million, valuing the company at $1.2 billion at the time. Airtel has retained majority control, seeking external capital to scale the business.
Also Read: Data centres later, fix the power ‘grid’-lock first
ET reported in April 2025 that Alpha Wave Global was circling Nxtra Data to acquire a significant stake as Carlyle looked to monetise its five-year-old investment. It was competing with DigitalBridge Group to acquire Carlyle's 24.04% stake for Rs 5,125 crore ($600 million), valuing Nxtra at Rs 20,500 crore ($2.4 billion), ET had reported at the time. Carlyle, which was earlier thinking of exiting its investment, even ran a full stake-sale process. Since then it’s decided to double down on the investment to capitalise on fast-growing demand.
Nxtra operates one of India’s largest data centre networks--14 core centres and 120 edge centres in 65 cities. It has 12% market share and capacity of 120-130 MW across major cities such as Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and Noida. It’s targeting 25% market share over the next three to four years with a total capacity of 1 GW, Bharti Airtel executive vice chairman Gopal Vittal said in an earnings call last month. According to Airtel's FY25 annual report, Nxtra's net profit for the year was Rs 224.3 crore on annual revenue of Rs 2,078.5 crore. Current liabilities amounted to Rs 956.7 crore, while net cash inflows from operating activities were at Rs 772 crore in the year ended March 2025.
The plan is to list the company in a few years.
Demand for digital infrastructure fuelled by AI and regional data protection laws has unleashed a wave of investment in India’s data centre industry.
Global hyperscalers Microsoft, Amazon and Google as well as Indian conglomerates such as Reliance, Adani, Tata and L&T are set to invest more than $270 billion in the next five to seven years in the domestic data centre industry, taking total capacity to about 10 GW from 1.4 GW now. Supportive government policies, including a 20-year tax holiday for cloud companies as well as safe-harbour provisions, have also encouraged global companies to make long-term bets.
Mirroring the trend in the US, large Indian business houses such as Reliance, Adani and Tata have committed several billion dollars in capital expenditure to ramp up their sovereign AI infrastructure, green energy capacity and develop affordable AI applications. Tata Consultancy Services has tied up with TPG for a $2.1 billion joint venture to set up data centres. Last month, TCS signed a 1 GW data centre deal with OpenAI for local AI processing in India. Meanwhile, domestic data centre companies such as Sify Infinit Spaces and the Hiranandani Group’s Yotta Data Services are preparing public listings expected to raise $800-850 million.
From being one of the largest investors in the Indian startup ecosystem behind Lenskart, Dream 11, Dailyhunt, Off Business, Chaayos, Delhivery and Cred among others, Alpha Wave has pivoted since 2024 to make bets in old economy companies such as VLCC, seeds company Advanta, a subsidiary of UPL, and Haldiram’s. Once the Nxtra deal is completed, it will be the second time after VLCC that it will be co-investing with Carlyle.
Alpha Wave is one of the key investment vehicles of Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, who has a net worth of $1 trillion and is also UAE national security advisor.
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