RIL joins hands with Brookfield Infrastructure and Digital Realty to develop data centres in India

According to the joint statement, Reliance will hold a 33.33 percent stake in each of the special purpose vehicles, making it an equal partner in the venture.

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) on July 24 announced its partnership with Brookfield Infrastructure and Digital Realty to collectively invest in special purpose vehicles (SPVs) for the development of data centres in India. As per the joint statement, Reliance will hold a 33.33 percent stake in each of the SPVs, making it an equal partner in the venture.

As per the statement, Digital Realty Trust holds the position as the leading global provider of cloud and carrier-neutral data centres, colocation, and interconnection solutions. With a vast network of over 300 data centres spanning 27 countries, the company has partnered with Brookfield Infrastructure to establish a joint venture. This collaboration aims to develop top-tier, well-connected, and flexible data centres in India, catering to the essential infrastructure requirements of enterprises and digital services firms.

RIL will become an equal partner in the JV, and the venture will be branded as ‘Digital Connexion: A Brookfield, Jio and Digital Realty Company’, the joint statement further stated.

The joint venture between Digital Realty Trust and Brookfield Infrastructure, according to the statement, is currently building data centres in Chennai and Mumbai. The first project MAA10 is a 100 MW campus-based 20 MW greenfield data centre in Chennai that is scheduled to be finished by the end of 2023. In addition, the JV recently bought 2.15 acres of property in Mumbai to build a 40 MW data centre.

These two strategic locations will enable the data centres to have seamless connectivity with crucial terrestrial infrastructure and undersea cables, transforming them into significant hubs for global connectivity for Indian businesses and providing gateways into India for multinational companies, the statement added.

The statement noted that India's data centre capacity is set to experience a substantial increase in the coming years as the country is already among the world's largest consumers of mobile data. This trend is anticipated to significantly increase as OTT platforms and gaming become more widely available along with the ongoing 5G rollout.

Enterprises will also incorporate data-intensive technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) when they implement 5G use cases, the statement added.

The statement further said continuous developments in generative AI technologies rely on hardware and data centre infrastructure, and so an increase in demand for these resources is predicted. Furthermore, there is an emphasis on preserving personal data within the country, which adds to the demand for additional data centre capacity in India.

The joint venture will meet the cloud and colocation demands of both local and global organisations, small and medium-sized enterprises, and the startups. The JV will effectively meet their needs as these entities increasingly move their resources to the cloud and off-premise.

Also read: Reliance Q1 results: Newbies cover the weakness of the legacy business

Kiran Thomas, CEO, Jio Platforms Limited, said the partnership will enable them to offer advanced plug-and-play solutions from the cloud, driving the digital transformation of enterprises and SMB clients. He added that in order for the country to achieve its goal of a $1 trillion digital economy by 2025, the government's assistance in providing this favourable ecosystem for the development and operation of data centres is critical.

Kiran Thomas said, “...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. The unique and highly engaging consumer and home experiences that we are offering and further innovating on, such as high-definition live content, AR/VR experiences, cloud gaming, immersive shopping experiences and cloud PC have massive compute capacity requirements. ......”

Partnership with Reliance delivers tremendous benefits, according to Arpit Agrawal, MD, Head of Infrastructure, India & Middle East, Brookfield. He emphasised the key role of data centres in delivering critical services and infrastructure to support India's broad digitalization across all sectors of life.

Serene Nah, MD 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.”

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