RMZ, a family-owned alternative asset owner, through its RMZ Digital Infrastructure Partners (RDIP), has entered into a joint venture with Colt Data Centre Services (Colt DCS), a global hyperscale data centre operator, to invest $1.7 billion in the Indian data centre market.
The investment will be made over the next three to five years through an equal partnership between RDIP and Colt DCS.
According to a statement by RMZ, the investment will initially focus on expediting development at existing sites in Navi Mumbai and Ambattur, Chennai, with a third site to be added later. Colt DCS executives stated that Pune or Hyderabad may be their next target, though the company is considering all major cities in India.
The data centres will have a combined capacity of approximately 250 megawatts (MW) on completion of all phases. Colt DCS aims to enhance its data centre capacity to a gigawatt over the next five years globally.
Niclas Sanfridsson, chief executive officer (CEO) of Colt DCS, said, “In terms of our expansion, India remains a strategic country of focus and key in delivering against our aggressive growth strategy.”
Deepak Chhabria, CEO of RMZ Infrastructure, stated that the company does not see land acquisition as a challenge. “We are witnessing an extraordinary shift in the data centre landscape, driven by the accelerating demands of cloud adoption and the AI revolution. Colt DCS' commitment to operational excellence and innovation complements our mission to build state-of-the-art facilities that meet the evolving needs of sectors such as banking, financial services, and media,” he added.