Digital Realty and Brookfield Infrastructure announced a 50-50 joint venture to develop and operate data centers in India.
The joint venture will operate under the brand name BAM Digital Realty. A press release did not reveal the investment plans in India.
India is a high-growth market, with data center demand expected to significantly increase, driven by rapidly growing data consumption, digitization of the economy, the onset of 5G and data localization trends.
Digital Realty CEO A William Stein said: “Our existing partnership with Brookfield, our Ascenty platform across Latin America, has already delivered long-term value to our customers, with over 250 megawatts of IT load capacity in Brazil, Chile and Mexico either fully built out or currently under construction.”
The joint venture will expand Brookfield Infrastructure’s data infrastructure portfolio, which currently includes $23 billion in assets across data transmission, distribution, and storage, including a portfolio of 139,000 telecom wireless towers in India, which it intends to expand to 175,000 over the near term.
Arpit Agrawal, Managing Director of India & Middle East, Brookfield Infrastructure, said: “Through the development of a high-quality, multi-city, India-focused data center platform, we believe BAM Digital Realty is well positioned to play a meaningful role in addressing the large and growing data demand in the country and to offer a differentiated solution to customers.”