Reliance Industries (RIL) has announced its partnership with Brookfield Infrastructure and Digital Realty to invest in developing data centers in India.
RIL, the promoter of Reliance Jio, will hold a significant 33.33 percent stake in each of the Indian Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs), making them an equal partner in the venture.
Digital Realty, a provider of data center solutions with a global presence, has a joint venture with Brookfield Infrastructure focused on establishing data centers to meet the growing infrastructure demands of Indian enterprises and digital services companies.
RIL’s participation will bolster the JV, which will operate under the name Digital Connexion: A Brookfield, Jio, and Digital Realty Company.
The joint venture is working on data center projects in prime locations of Chennai and Mumbai. The first data center, MAA10, with a capacity of 20 megawatts (MW), is expected to be completed by the end of 2023 in Chennai.
Additionally, the JV recently acquired 2.15 acres of land in Mumbai to build a 40 MW data center. These facilities will be strategically connected to terrestrial connectivity infrastructure and undersea cables, serving as hubs for global connectivity for Indian firms and gateways into India for multinational corporations.
The surge in usage of digital services like OTT platforms, gaming, and 5G-related applications, such as the internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), will drive the need for advanced data center infrastructure.
The JV aims to cater to the cloud and colocation requirements of global and local enterprises, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), and startups in India. Leveraging Digital Realty’s energy-efficient data center platform design and operating procedures, Brookfield’s knowledge of the Indian infrastructure market, and Jio’s extensive digital and connectivity ecosystem, the JV will offer cutting-edge services to its clients.
Jio covers nearly 99.5 percent of the Indian population with its fiber presence. This will expand the JV’s connectivity to data centers and various establishments in the country. It will integrate Digital Realty’s PlatformDIGITAL, a global data center platform with over 300 data centers across 27 countries and 6 continents, providing customers with access to a dense connected data community of partners, solutions, and services, including Jio’s network and cloud solutions in India.
The partnership between RIL, Brookfield Infrastructure, and Digital Realty is poised to play a crucial role in meeting the escalating data center and compute capacity requirements in India, further fueling the nation’s digital transformation and growth in the tech sector.
