Nikhil Kamath invests ₹200 crore in data centre company CtrlS, says, 'Every meaningful tech shift runs on…'

Indian data centre firm CtrlS has raised fresh capital from two prominent entrepreneurs. Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath has invested ₹200 crore in the homegrown hyperscaler, while Sreeram Reddy Vanga has put in ₹50 crore, the company said on Wednesday.

The money will be used for expanding CtrlS's infrastructure and capacity build-out to meet growing enterprise and hyperscale demand across India, particularly as AI, cloud, and digital workloads accelerate

"Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath has invested ₹200 crore in CtrlS, one of India's largest hyperscale data centre operators, alongside a ₹50 crore investment by entrepreneur Sreeram Reddy Vanga," the statement said.

Kamath said that every meaningful technology shift of the next decade, AI, cloud, and digital public infrastructure, runs on data centres.

"India is at an inflexion point where the underlying infrastructure either keeps pace or becomes the bottleneck. CtrlS has spent years building the kind of depth that does not get assembled overnight. That is what made this an easy decision," he said.

Vanga said that India's AI and cloud ambitions will require world-class digital infrastructure at scale.

"We are delighted to welcome Nikhil Kamath and Sreeram Reddy Vanga as investors in CtrlS. It gives us the ability to think bigger, move faster, and continue building datacenter platforms that will support India's next phase of growth," CtrlS Datacenters Founder and CEO Sridhar Pinnapureddy said.

CPP Investments' ₹7,000-crore commitment for CtrlS

The investment follows a prior ₹7,000-crore commitment from CPP Investments to scale operations.

Earlier in June, CtrlS secured an investment commitment of up to ₹7,000 crore from Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) at a valuation of ₹44,914 crore to scale up its operations in India.

As per the plan, CPP Investments was supposed to inject ₹4,000 crore to acquire an 8.2 per cent stake in CtrlS, and up to ₹3,000 crore to set up a joint venture to develop hyperscale data centre campuses across the country.

"India's AI moment is not on the horizon, it is already here. The demand signals from hyperscalers, cloud service providers, and enterprises are clear and unmistakable…Our partnership with CPP Investments…(is) not merely expanding capacity but also establishing the benchmark for AI-ready infrastructure in one of the world's most significant digital markets," Pinnapureddy had said when the JV was inked.

Founded in 2007, CtrlS operates 19 data centres across nine Indian markets with a combined capacity of over 370 MW. The company has 4.4 GW of projects at various stages of execution and has announced plans to expand overseas into the Middle East and Southeast Asia, starting with Thailand.