Singapore Technologies Telemedia (ST Telemedia) through ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) will acquire a 74% majority stake in Tata Communications’ data centre business in India and Singapore, according to an official statement.
Tata Communications said that it will remain as a significant shareholder, holding the remaining 26% stake in the businesses. The joint venture will include Tata Communications’ fourteen data centres in key cities across India and its three Singapore facilities.
“This new joint venture partnership will now allow us to hone our strategic focus on advanced services within the data centre that enable digital transformation for our customers, in addition to infrastructure services. Our new partnership also gives us the opportunity to redeploy capital behind other areas of our business, to further broaden the portfolio of services we can offer to meet our customers’ current and future requirements.," Vinod Kumar, Managing Director and CEO, Tata Communications, said in a joint statement.
The data centres currently service a highly-diversified customer base, including blue chip enterprises in Asia, e-commerce platforms and global multi-national corporations. Both parties will work in partnership to ensure service continuity for customers and employee engagement. With this acquisition, STT GDC will further expand and strengthen its global data centre network to span four geographies, including strong bases in two of Asia’s largest growth markets - India and China.
Tata Communications will retain a stake in the colocation market in these important markets, while honing its focus on the development and introduction of its advanced managed services portfolio (including IP, cloud enablement and unified communications services), and continuing to invest in its strategic partnerships globally.
“This partnership marks another key milestone in STT GDC’s growth. Since ST Telemedia’s initial investment in the data centre business in mid-2014, we have made remarkable progress in building a formidable data centre footprint internationally with strategic presence in key economic hubs to capture industry demand," Sio Tat Hiang, Executive Director, ST Telemedia, said.
He added that the latest addition of India to the STT GDC network will be a major impetus to advance the company’s ambition to be a significant global data centre service provider. In 2014, the Indian data centre business of Tata Communications Limited was transferred to its wholly-owned subsidiary Tata Communications Data Centers Private Ltd (TCDC) through a High Court approved process.
Currently, TCDC owns and operates a total of fourteen data centres, including facilities in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Pune.
