Airtel’s Nxtra To Raise $1 Bn To Scale Data Centre Capacity To 1 GW

Bharti Airtel’s data centre arm Nxtra is raising $1 Bn (nearly ₹9,400 Cr) in a strategic funding round led by Alpha Wave Global and existing backer Carlyle. 

In a statement, Bharti Airtel said that Alpha Wave will invest $435 Mn (₹4,107 Cr), while Carlyle will infuse $240 Mn (₹2,266 Cr) in the data centre company. Anchorage Capital will also invest $35 Mn (₹330.5 Cr), with the remaining $290 Mn (₹2,738 Cr) coming from Airtel.

Nxtra raised the funds at a post-money valuation of around $3.1 Bn (₹29,270 Cr). Post the transaction, Airtel will continue to retain a controlling stake in the data centre company. The deal will, however, be subject to regulatory approvals from Indian authorities.

The company said that it plans to utilise the capital to accelerate its growth plans, scale its infrastructure and broaden its portfolio of services. 

“At Nxtra, we have built one of India’s most advanced and sustainable data center networks, designed to meet the evolving needs of enterprises, hyperscalers, and government. With nearly 300 MW capacity today, we aim to scale to 1 GW in the next few years, targeting around 25% market share,” said Airtel’s executive vice-chairman Gopal Vittal.

The development comes nearly six years after Carlyle Group first invested $235 Mn in Nxtra in 2020 for a 25% stake. 

Delhi NCR-based Nxtra offers data centre services to Indian and global enterprises, startups, SMEs and governments. Its offerings include co-location, cloud infrastructure and edge computing services. 

The company claims to operate 14 large core data centers and 120+ edge facilities across the country. With an existing facility in Pune, the data centre company claims to be also developing additional AI-ready campuses across Chennai, Mumbai, and Kolkata. 

The fundraise comes amid a surge in demand for secure data centres due to soaring artificial intelligence (AI) usage and increasing demand for digital services. On top of this, growing cloud penetration among enterprises and data localisation mandates are also propelling a lot of this demand. 

What is also spurring the rise of data centres in the country are lower operating costs offered by the country are the slew of incentives rolled out by the Central and state governments. 

In her Budget 2026 speech, finance minister (FM) Nirmala Sitharaman proposed a tax holiday for foreign cloud service provider companies till 2047, with certain caveats. She also proposed a 15% safe harbour on costs for companies providing data centre services from India through related entities.

As a result, Indian conglomerates and global big tech giants are racing to set up data centres in the country. Last month at the India AI Summit, Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani announced a $100 Bn investment towards developing renewable energy-powered data centres by 2035.

Just last week, it emerged that the conglomerate was scouting sites to set up data centres and is in talks with big tech firms Meta and Google as well as ecommerce major Flipkart to explore partnerships for its data centre business.

Rival conglomerate Reliance also plans to build a 3 GW facility in Jamnagar and a 1 GW project in Visakhapatnam to build AI-ready data centres, while ecommerce giant Amazon also plans to invest $12.7 Bn on cloud infrastructure in India by 2030.

Industry estimates project India’s installed data centre capacity to double year-on-year (YoY) to 2 GW by 2026-end, and grow further to 8 GW by 2030. At the heart of all this is the homegrown data centre market, which, as per Economic Survey 2024-25, is projected to reach a size of $11.6 Bn by 2032.

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