Airtel arm Nxtra launches new data centre in Chennai; to invest Rs 5,000 cr by 2025 to boost capacity

Bharti Airtel's data centre subsidiary Nxtra on Tuesday launched its new hyperscale data centre park in Chennai. The facility was unveiled digitally by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin.

"This is Nxtra by Airtel's third large data centre in Chennai. The 38 MW LEED-certified facility is spread over 270,000 sq ft," a statement from the company said.

The new data centre is fully integrated with Airtel's global submarine cable network, thereby, providing an end-to-end secure connectivity solution to hyperscalers, it added.

Nxtra claims to operate the largest network of data centres in India, with 11 hyperscale and 120 edge data centres and also manages critical submarine landing stations.

The company also said it will invest Rs 5,000 crore by 2025 to increase its data centre capacity three times to over 400 MW.

Also Read: Mukesh Ambani's ambitious succession plan for Reliance Industries
 
"This will include setting up hyperscale data centre parks in key metro cities. Nxtra by Airtel is already scaling up the use of green energy for its data centres and aims to source 50 per cent of the power requirements of these centres through renewable sources as part of Airtel's overall GHG emission reduction targets," the statement said.

Nxtra said India is seeing strong demand for reliable data centre solutions, and the country's data centre industry is expected to more than double its installed capacity from about 450 MW to 1074 MW by 2023.

Airtel Business Director and CEO Ajay Chitkara said, "This is a major milestone in our journey as we scale up aggressively to serve the emerging digital India opportunity. Chennai, with its strategic location and access to cable landing stations, has the potential to become a regional data centre hub for South Asia."

Also Read: Swiss Re expands partnership with TCS to build cloud-based digital workplace