Reliance Industries, Brookfield enter into data centre partnership

The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to complete in around 3 months

Reliance Industries on Monday said it had agreed to invest alongside Brookfield Infrastructure and Digital Realty in its Indian special- purpose vehicles (SPVs) for developing data centres in India. 

The oil to telecom conglomerate said it would hold a 33.33 per cent stake in each of the related Indian SPVs of Brookfield  and Digital Realty and become an equal partner.

The proposed investment, RIL said, was around Rs 378 crore, with a commitment for further investments of up to Rs 622 crore in form of equity and debt securities in these SPVs and any other new SPVs set up.  The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to complete in around three months.

Digital Realty Trust has a joint venture with Brookfield Infrastructure for developing high-quality, highly-connected, scalable data centres to meet the critical infrastructure needs of enterprises and digital services companies in India. RIL will become an equal partner in this joint venture, to be rebranded as ‘Digital Connexion: A Brookfield, Jio and Digital Realty Company’.

The JV is currently developing data centers in marquee locations of Chennai and Mumbai. RIL said the JV’s 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. The JV recently announced the acquisition of 2.15 acres of land in Mumbai, to build a 40 MW data center, the statement added.

“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,” said Kiran Thomas, chief executive officer, Jio Platforms Limited.