Airtel bets big on digi services with third data centre roll out in Chennai

Nxtra, a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel Ltd, today unveiled its new hyperscale data centre in Chennai to meet the rising demand for digital services. 

This is the company’s third centre in this city spread over 270,000 sq.ft area. With this launch, Airtel claimed that it now operates the largest network of data centres in India with 11 hyperscale and 120 edge data centres and manages critical submarine landing stations. 

Ajay Chitkara, Director and CEO, Airtel Business said, “Chennai, with its strategic location and access to cable landing stations, has the potential to become a regional data center hub for South Asia. We are already serving large Indian and global customers from the city and we will continue to invest to expand our operations here.” 

The data centre subsidiary of Bharti Airtel maintained that it is fully integrated with Airtel’s global submarine cable network, thereby, providing an end-to-end secure connectivity solution to hyperscalers.  

The company said it will pump in Rs. 5,000 crore by 2025 to increase its capacity by 3X to over 400 MW. This will include setting up hyperscale data centre parks in other metro cities. 

With 5G around the corner, a fast growing digital economy, enterprises transitioning to cloud and local data storage regulations, India is witnessing strong demand for reliable data centre solutions.  

The Indian data centre industry is expected more than double its installed capacity from an approximate 450 MW to 1074 MW by 2023, the company said in a statement.