Airtel data centre arm Nxtra to raise $1 billion investment

Bharti Airtel Ltd on Monday announced a $1 billion investment in its data centre arm, Nxtra, alongside Alpha Wave Global, Carlyle, and Anchorage Capital, to expand its network in the country. The deal will value the data centre company at $3.1 billion and is subject to regulatory approvals in India, Airtel said in a release.

As part of the deal, Alpha Wave Global will invest $435 million, Carlyle $240 million, and Anchorage Capital $35 million. The remaining $290 million will be infused by parent Airtel in the data centre company. “The investors’ final shareholding will be subject to finalized post-closing adjustments. Airtel will continue to retain a controlling stake in Nxtra,” Airtel said.

The investment assumes significance as data centre investments have been rising in the country. In February, Reliance Industries and Adani Enterprises announced $210 billion into India’s tech ecosystem, including data centres. Other players making a major bet on India’s data centre business include Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, which committed $39 billion last year.

Nxtra has also recently partnered with Google to build a gigawatt-scale AI data centre campus, backed by a $15-billion investment.

Meanwhile, Airtel on Monday also paid over ₹9,000 crore towards its outstanding adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues to the government, two people in the know said. This marks the first tranche of payments following a four-year moratorium that ended in September 2025, with instalments beginning in March 2026.

The payment from the telecom operator has come at a time when it is seeking reassessment and recalculation of its AGR dues, seeking parity with peer Vodafone Idea. The reassessment exercise for Vodafone Idea followed Supreme Court rulings in October and November 2025 that allowed the government to reassess and recalculate the company’s AGR dues.

Investor Alpha Wave Global has backed companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI.

Mint was the first to report on Sunday evening that Bharti Airtel will make a payment of around ₹10,000 crore by 31 March towards the first instalment of its AGR dues, after it was granted a four-year payment pause under the government's 2021 relief.

The investment announcement for Nxtra came in after market hours.

Queries emailed to Airtel on the AGR payment did not elicit any response till press time.

On Nxtra, Gopal Vittal, executive vice chairman of Bharti Airtel, said, “With 300 MW capacity today, we aim to scale to 1 GW in the next few years, targeting 25% market share.”

The company currently has a 12% market share, Vittal said during a post-December quarter earnings call with analysts.

India’s data centre market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 21% between 2024 and 2030, reaching nearly 3,400 MW of IT capacity, according to a Savills India report.

To be sure, Carlyle, through its affiliate CA Cloud Investments, acquired a 24% stake in Nxtra for $235 million, or about ₹1,800 crore, in 2020.

Carlyle India Advisors partner Kapil Modi reaffirmed their partnership with Airtel, citing Nxtra’s strong growth and scalable platform as key to becoming a top-tier player in India’s digital infrastructure market.

Macquarie Equity Research reported that India’s 500 million streamers and social media users are driving a surge in demand for high-performance data centre infrastructure.

Nxtra operates 14 large core data centres and 120+ edge facilities across India, offering co-location, cloud infrastructure, managed hosting, data backup, disaster recovery, and edge computing services.

On Monday, shares of Bharti Airtel closed 3% lower at ₹1,789.2 on the National Stock Exchange.