Nxtra, the data centre arm of Bharti Airtel, plans to invest approximately Rs 5,000 crore over the next three years to double its existing capacity to over 400 MW by 2027. During this period, Nxtra by Airtel plans to launch multiple new hyperscale data centers across key metro cities and will increase the existing capacity. This also includes the company setting up its biggest data center in Hyderabad for which it has acquired 40 acres of land. The 200 MW data centre will be part of the company's plan to double the capacity.
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Nxtra's Expansion Plans
Currently, Nxtra operates 12 large core data centers in India, supported by a network of over 120 edge data centers spread across 65+ cities, with a total capacity of 200 MW and over 500 customers. Its core data centers are located in cities including Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Noida, Manesar, Bhubaneswar, and Mumbai, with additional centers under development in Bengaluru and Kolkata.
"We are looking to invest around Rs 5,000 crore in the next three years to expand our capacity to 400 MW. This growth will occur within our existing campuses, leveraging already-established power infrastructure and land," said Ashish Arora, CEO of Nxtra, in an interaction with TelecomTalk.
"The Hyderabad DC should be ready in two years, and reach full capacity in about five years," Arora added.
Leveraging AI for Operational Excellence
TelecomTalk has toured Nxtra's Chennai SIPCOT Data Center, where the company has implemented Ecolibrium's AI-powered SmartSense platform. This makes Nxtra the first data center company in India to leverage AI for predictive maintenance, improved operational and energy efficiency, automated operations, and optimised capital utilisation. Nxtra is piloting this technology in Chennai and plans broader deployment across its facilities.
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Q: How does Nxtra's capacity expansion strategy compare with competitors?
When asked about Nxtra's capacity expansion strategies compared to those of competitors, Ashish Arora (Director and CEO) and Rajesh Tapadia (Director and COO), in an exclusive interaction with TelecomTalk, explained that the company's approach is guided by customer needs rather than by competition.
"Frankly, that's not the lens from which we look at our business. Our lens is from our customers. We are increasingly growing with most of our customers being hyperscaler as well as enterprise. We look at capacity being planned in cities where we see growth coming from either of these customers. So there are some centres which are more led by Hyperscaler growth. There are some centres which are more led by enterprise growth, but we are catering to both the segments that go in the market," Ashish Arora said.
Secondly, all our facilities are designed to meet the requirements of both hyperscalers and enterprises. "Sometimes hyperscale requirements are a little more stringent, so we invest a little extra to meet that requirement and then enterprise becomes a subset. But all our facilities are geared up to meet both the requirements. In any case, with the way the technologies are evolving, especially on the AI side, the more or less the technical requirements are converging. Even enterprises are looking at similar models and hyperscalers in terms of their data centres. But we are catering to both the segments," he added.
Nxtra is committed to serving both hyperscalers and enterprises, with cities like Bengaluru becoming more enterprise-driven, while Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru also see significant hyperscaler demand, Arora noted.
Q: What challenges does Nxtra face in India's competitive data center market?
When asked about the challenges Nxtra faces in India's competitive data center market, Arora replied, "Our advantage is that we already have a very robust customer base. So our current challenge is to really build as fast as we can to meet the demand of the customers we have. We do believe that, yes, there are far too many players in the market than the market will probably support, but therefore the newer players will have a bigger challenge because they are building capacities without really having a customer base."
Arora says Nxtra's customers are very long-term customers. "It's a very long-term decision. It's not two years, five years. It's actually 10, 15, maybe longer. So, once the customers commit themselves to a player, they stay with them. For new players, creating space for themselves would be a challenge. But for someone like us, our challenge is primarily to build capacity as fast as we can to meet the demand."
Also Read: Nxtra by Airtel Plans to Double Its Capacity to Meet Growing Demand
Nxtra by Airtel
Nxtra specialises in designing, building and operating the largest network of smart, resilient and sustainable data centres in India, serving hundreds of customers spanning enterprises, hyperscalers, governments, SMEs, OTT and CDN.
