Airtel is in partnership with Bridgepointe, a tech-advisory firm, which will seek to help US enterprises expand in India and Africa. Airtel plans to form more partnerships like this to grow its global business by venturing into the hyperscale and OTT sectors.
Airtel, officially known as Bharti Airtel Limited, is a leading telecommunications company based in India. It operates in multiple countries across Asia and Africa, providing mobile and fixed-line services, broadband internet, and digital TV solutions. Airtel is one of the largest telecom operators in the world, with a significant presence in India and several African countries.
Nxtra Data, a subsidiary of Airtel, focuses on providing data center and managed hosting services. It offers a wide range of solutions such as colocation, cloud infrastructure, and disaster recovery, As of now Nxtra, a joint venture between Airtel and Carlyle, is present only in India, where it has 12 large data centers and 120 edge data centers. Carlyle Group completed the acquisition of a 24% stake in Airtel’s Nxtra for $325 million last year.
Expanding Nxtra Data’s operations to Africa could present several potential benefits for Airtel. Africa is a rapidly growing market with rising demand for data center services due to the increasing adoption of cloud computing, digital transformation initiatives, and the proliferation of mobile devices. By entering the African market, Airtel could tap into this growing demand and strengthen its position as a leading telecom and data services industry player. What works for Airtel is that both India and Africa are growing regions for hyperscalers and OTT players. A large part of the population in India and Africa is still to be connected, which means that both regions will be of interest to MAANG companies – meaning Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google.