RIL Partners With Brookfield, Digital Realty To Set Up Data Centers In India

Reliance Industries Ltd. has entered into an agreement to invest alongside Brookfield Infrastructure and Digital Realty in their Indian special purpose vehicles dedicated to developing data centres in India.

RIL will hold a 33.33% stake in each of the Indian SPVs and become an equal partner.

Digital Realty Trust Inc. is a provider of cloud and carrier-neutral data centre, colocation, and interconnection solutions globally, with more than 300 data centres across 27 countries.

They have a joint venture with Brookfield Infrastructure to develop data centres. RIL will become an equal partner in the joint venture, which will be branded as ‘Digital Connexion: A Brookfield, Jio, and Digital Realty Company’.

The JV is currently developing data centres in marquee locations in Chennai and Mumbai. Its first 20-megawatt greenfield data centre—MAA10—on a 100-MW campus in Chennai is expected to be completed by the end of 2023.

"Given the location of these sites, the data centres will be connected to critical terrestrial connectivity infrastructure as well as undersea cables and will become hubs for global connectivity for Indian companies and gateways into India for multinational companies," RIL said in a statement on Monday.

The JV will be well-positioned to serve global and local enterprises, small and medium businesses, and the vibrant startups of India for their cloud and colocation requirements as they move their computer resources on the cloud and off-premise, it said.

The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to be completed in around three months.