Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) announced its partnership with Brookfield Infrastructure and Digital Realty to collectively invest in special purpose vehicles (SPVs) for the development of data centers in India. The announcement comes at a time when data center capacity in India is expected to rise exponentially as more people go online.
Reliance will initially invest about 3.78 billion rupees in Mercury Holdings SG Pte units, a joint venture (JV) between Brookfield Infrastructure and U.S.-based real estate investment trust Digital Realty. The company has committed to invest the remaining 6.22 billion rupees in equity and debt securities of the JV’s units when needed.
Reliance will hold a 33.33 percent stake in each of the SPVs, making it an equal partner in the venture. The venture will be branded as ‘Digital Connexion: A Brookfield, Jio and Digital Realty Company. The joint venture between Digital Realty Trust and Brookfield Infrastructure is currently building data centers in Chennai and Mumbai. The first project MAA10 is a 100 MW campus-based 20 MW greenfield data center in Chennai that is scheduled to be finished by the end of 2023. In addition, the JV recently bought 2.15 res of property in Mumbai to build a 40 MW data center.
According to a recent report India’s data centers market is expected to grow 40% a year and draw $5 billion in investments by 2025.