The Carlyle Group based in Washington DC, is investing $235 million on buying a quarter of Nxtra, the data center subsidiary of India’s Bharti Airtel. Nxtra has ten large data centers and 120 edge data centers in India. It hopes to use the investment to expand its presence and offerings in the country. Last year it commissioned a new data center in Pune and it is building more in the major cities of Chennai, Mumbai, and Kolkata.
Parent company Airtel remains one of the largest players in India’s enterprise connectivity sector, with more than 2,500 large businesses and 1 million small and mid-sized enterprises as customers. The growing emphasis on digitazation, coupled with India’s local data-storage requirements, is fueling the growth of the data center market. Google and Amazon have also set up data centers in India.
Cloud adoption by small and midsized enterprises will increase the need for Indian data centers. The coronavirus pandemic has provided an additional boost, as companies invest in tools to maintain social distancing. The 25% stake in Nxtra will be acquired by Comfort Investments II, an affiliate of CAP V Mauritius Limited, an investment fund managed and advised by entities of the Carlyle Group. Subject to regulatory approval, the deal is valued at $1.2 billion.
Carlyle has invested more than $2.5 billion in several Indian firms, including SBI Life, SBI Card, HDFC, Delhivery, Piramal Pharma and PNB Housing Finance.
India is witnessing a considerable surge in demand for secure data centres as businesses undertake digital transformation and consumer demand for digital services continues to increase. The expansion of hyperscalers across the region following the government’s directive on data localization is propelling a lot of this demand, with other market drivers including the growth in user data and increase in cloud penetration.
Nxtra is building multiple large data centres across the country to capture the significant growth opportunities in India. Last year, the Company commissioned a state of the art data centre in Pune and is building more across Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata. Nxtra will use the proceeds from this transaction to continue scaling up its infrastructure and offerings across the country.
Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO (India and South Asia), Bharti Airtel, commented: “At Airtel, we have built a robust data centre portfolio that is future ready and scalable. For us, the security and data privacy requirements of our customers are our top priorities, which we have established as a key differentiator for our data centre offerings. Rapid digitization has opened up a massive growth opportunity for data centres in India and we plan to accelerate our investments to become a major player in this segment. We are delighted to have Carlyle as a strategic partner in this exciting journey, particularly given their experience in this industry, and look forward to working with them.”
Neeraj Bharadwaj, Managing Director of the Carlyle Asia Partners advisory team, commented: “India is set to become one of the largest markets in the world for digital services. Airtel, with its proven track record of solid execution and customer focus, is well positioned to leverage the potential growth of data centres in India. We look forward to collaborating with Airtel to unlock the full potential of Nxtra.”
Last updated: December 26th, 2025
