Hiranandani-backed Indian data centre Yotta to go public via SPAC merger

Sunil Gupta, CEO of Yotta

Nidar Infrastructure, the parent company of data centre provider Yotta, will go public on Nasdaq by merging with Carta, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

The pre-transaction equity value of Nidar implied by the merger terms is approximately $2.75 billion.

Yotta designs, builds and operates Tier III and IV data centers in India, which offer both colocation and hyperscale services and cloud and managed services.

According to an investor presentation by Carta, Yotta currently has 33 megawatt of live data centre capacity, with potential development of up to 890 megawatt in the future.

The presentation also reveals that the company’s revenue grew 123 percent from $22 million in FY23 to an estimated $49.2 million revenue in FY24. Its net loss dropped marginally from $53.2 million in FY23 to $52.8 million in FY24.

The company estimates that its revenue will zoom three-folds to $156 million in FY25, while net loss will shoot up to $113.4 million. It has projected a billion dollars of capex during the financial year.

Yotta made waves a couple of months back as it became the first to acquire Nvidia’s H100 graphics processing units. It has placed an order for 16,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, of which 850 have been delivered. Yotta has said plans to acquire another 16,000 GPUs over the next one year.

Sunil Gupta, CEO and co-founder of Nidar, said, "Through its Yotta data centers, Nidar is India's leading data center provider for AI and high-performance compute. With our priority access to industry-leading GPUs through our partnership with the world's leader in high-performance compute, together with the added ability to access US capital markets, Yotta is poised to capture long-lasting demand from cloud infrastructure and AI."

Gupta has been working for decades on data center businesses and co-founded Yotta in 2019 with the backing of real estate billionaire Niranjan Hiranandani, according to a Bloomberg report. As a cloud computing operator, Yotta offers companies like Wells Fargo & Co. access to data storage and computing power they can scale up or down as needed, without buying and installing their own hardware.

Darshan Hiranandani, co-founder of Nidar and director of Nidar's largest shareholder, added, "Nidar's management team has significant experience in successfully building and operating India's leading data center provider.  By combining with Cartica, this will enable our management team to continue to execute on our growth strategy to effectively build on Yotta's world-class platform, accelerate growth, and create long-term shareholder value."