Lightstorm Telecom Connectivity Pvt. Ltd, a network infrastructure company backed by private equity firm I Squared Capital, secured a ₹2,500 crore (~$260 million) long-term debt facility from IndusInd Bank to expand its data centre connectivity network, its co-founder, group chief executive, and managing director, Amajit Gupta, told Mint.
“The 10-year fully underwritten facility will fund terrestrial and subsea fibre projects connecting Indian data centre clusters with regional hubs,” he said.
Lightstorm will deploy the capital to construct network infrastructure across India's southern corridor and expand its I-2SEA subsea cable system to Southeast Asia, Japan, and the US, he added.
The company started its domestic operations in 2020, according to its website, with over 5,000 kilometres of fibre connecting seven data centres. The company currently operates over 30,000 kilometres of terrestrial fibre and 21,000 kilometres of subsea fibre, linking more than 100 data centres globally.
Delivered through Polarin, a network-as-a-service (NaaS) platform, Lightstorm lets enterprises, hyperscalers, and AI infrastructure providers provision and monitor global connectivity on demand.
Investment push
While the debt facility is not tied to a drawdown, initial capital deployment will follow project milestones over a 12 to 18-month build-out period. Initial funds will focus on domestic network corridors, while the subsea cable segment will require capital over the next 24 to 36 months.
The debt facility rebalances Lightstorm's capital structure after five years of minimal debt use. The agreement provides flexibility to roll up an existing, largely undrawn ₹700 crore credit line from the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund, which the company took in February 2025.
Gupta explained that despite having internal cash flows strong enough to support a 20-25% annual revenue growth, the decision to raise debt was driven by capital structure optimization and the need to invest aggressively ahead of the artificial intelligence (AI) demand curve.
Lightstorm's external debt-to-profit before interest, lease depreciation, and tax (PBILDT) ratio stood at 1.06x as on December-end 2025, compared to 2.46x as on March-end the same year, according to a 19 March report by CareEdge Ratings.
The report, however, added that “higher-than-expected debt-funded capex that weakens leverage will remain a key rating monitorable”.
Lightstorm's debt raise comes at a time when India's data centres, backed by massive global funding, are expanding beyond the metros into smaller towns. Over the past 12 months, domestic conglomerates, Big Tech firms, such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta, and standalone operators have committed over $250 billion to build new data centre capacities across the country.
Research by proptech company Square Yards found that while India currently generates nearly 20% of the world's digital data, it accounts for only 4% of global data centre capacity, indicating “substantial headroom for infrastructure expansion”.
The country's data centre capacity could reach 7-8 gigawatts by 2035 if currently announced projects are fully realized. This points to significant long-term opportunities across power, cooling, backup infrastructure, construction and electrical equipment.
Earnings boost
The CareEdge report said Lightstorm's total operating income was expected to grow at a healthy rate in FY26, supported by strong monthly recurring revenue, after increasing 78% year-on-year to ₹589 crore in 9MFY26. PBILDT margin improved to ~56.8% in the same period from 37.8% in FY25, aided by operating leverage.
CareEdge said it “anticipates operating profitability to remain healthy as network utilization improves”.
With capital being deployed to expand its projects, Lightstorm is also targeting internal rates of return in the high teens, Gupta said.
Moneycontrol reported on 4 March that Miami-headquartered I Squared Capital was weighing a 20% stake sale in a digital infra platform at up to $1.5 billion valuation.
Clarifying on that, Gupta told Mint that “there is no sell-down which is happening”. When asked about a public market debut, he added that “an initial public offering is definitely one of the options, but we don't have any confirmed timeline as of now”.
The connectivity industry is highly competitive, with established players such as Tata Communications Ltd and Bharti Airtel Ltd already having significant terrestrial and undersea cable capacity.