Brookfield Infrastructure, Digital Realty form JV for data centres

The venture will expand Brookfield Infra's global data portfolio of $23 billion in assets across data transmission, distribution and storage, and 139,000 telecom wireless towers India

Brookfield Infrastructure, a subsidiary of Canada's Brookfield, and NYSE-listed Digital Realty, the global provider of data centres, today announced the setting up of an equal joint venture to develop data centres in India. The JV will operate under the brand name BAM Digital Realty.  

The joint venture will expand Brookfield Infrastructure’s global data infrastructure portfolio, which currently includes $23 billion in assets across data transmission, distribution, storage, and a portfolio of 139,000 operational telecom wireless towers in the country. Brookfield Infra intends to expand this to 175,000 over the near term. The company has over a decade of experience investing in India, with approximately $20 billion of assets under management including infrastructure, renewable power, real estate, and private equity.

BAM Digital Realty plans to acquire land parcels in multiple Indian metros for the development of data center campuses to support the needs of global hyperscale service providers as well as international and local enterprises.  The joint venture expects to design, build and operate sustainable facilities, drawing upon the firms’ broader commitments to sustainable operations, including carbon reduction initiatives, release from the JV said.

“India is a rapidly emerging data centre market and offers a bright future, with accelerating adoption of digital business models among a population that recognises the role of technology for future economic development,” said Digital Realty Chief Executive Officer A William Stein. “We look forward to building upon our successful partnership with Brookfield by entering the Indian data center market together and extending opportunities for digital transformation with the global consistency of PlatformDIGITAL," he said.

“We are pleased to further expand both our partnership with Digital Realty and our presence in India through this joint venture,” said Arpit Agrawal, Managing Director and Head of India & Middle East, Brookfield Infrastructure.  “Through the development of a high-quality, multi-city, India-focused data center platform, we believe BAM Digital Realty is well positioned to play a meaningful role in addressing the large and growing data demand in the country and to offer a differentiated solution to customers.”

Many corporates have entered into data centres to tap the opportunities in the segment.

Early this year, the Adani Group forayed into the data centre business by forming a 50:50 joint venture with US-based EdgeConneX to build hyperscale data centr parks in the six cities.

The Hiranandani group is also setting up data centres in the country.