Digital Realty and Brookfield announce data centre expansion in India

Digital Realty and Brookfield Infrastructure are establishing a 50/50 joint venture focused on the development, ownership and operation of institutional quality data centres in India. The joint venture will operate under the brand name BAM Digital Realty.  

With a population of over 1.4 billion, the world’s fifth-largest economy in terms of GDP and an expanding focus on the digital delivery of services, India represents a key market opportunity to extend coverage, capacity and connectivity options for the world’s leading service providers as well as local and global enterprise customers. 

“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. “Our existing partnership with Brookfield, our Ascenty platform across Latin America, has already delivered long-term value to our customers, with over 250 megawatts of IT load capacity in Brazil, Chile and Mexico either fully built out or currently under construction.”  

The joint venture will expand Brookfield Infrastructure’s significant global data infrastructure portfolio, which currently includes $23 billion in assets across data transmission, distribution, and storage, including a portfolio of 139,000 operational telecom wireless towers in India, which it intends to expand to 175,000 over the near term.  Brookfield 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.  

“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 centre 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.”  

BAM Digital Realty intends to acquire land parcels in multiple Indian metros for the development of data centre campuses to support the needs of global hyper scale 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.  

The closing of the joint venture is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals and is expected to occur in the second half of 2021.