Data Centres To Enable India’s Trillion-Dollar Digital Economy Growth

* Nxtra By Airtel – JLL Research Forecasts Sizable Growth For India Data Centre Sector

* Mumbai and Chennai identified as major accelerators of capacity expansion by Nxtra by Airtel and JLL

India’s data centre industry is poised for a sustained period of growth, driven by a diverse range of consumption and demographic trends, says Nxtra by Airtel, the data centre subsidiary of Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), India’s premier communications solutions provider, in association with JLL India, the country’s largest real estate consultancy and professional services firm. The launch of a joint study today – ‘Data Centres: The building blocks of digital revolution in India,’ projects that the expansion of the Indian data centre industry will be supported by the accelerated adoption of digital infrastructure led by the pandemic, rising digital usage, cloud consumption and the national 5G rollout.

According to Nxtra by Airtel and JLL analysis, much of the industry growth will centre around Mumbai and Chennai due to their business and infrastructure advantages, strategic location, and cable landing stations that are well-positioned to support and enable the growth of data centres across India.

Further, the study also shows that the convergence of data protection, strong demand from cloud players, migration from captive to cloud, industry-friendly regulations, government’s digital initiatives, and investments will spearhead the ongoing growth of the data centre industry in India.

“India’s digital transformation is expected to create an economic value of US$1 trillion by 2025. Apart from existing sectors, new areas like agriculture, healthcare, logistics, jobs and skills market, e-governance and other areas, coupled with advanced technologies, will lead to significant growth of data storage and computing. The Indian data centre industry will act as the backbone, enabling India to emerge as a global hub. Owing to their locations and infrastructure, Mumbai and Chennai are expected to be the largest beneficiaries of potential growth in India’s data centre market,” said Rachit Mohan, Head, Data Centre Advisory, India, JLL.

Rajesh Tapadia, CEO, Nxtra by Airtel said: “The data centre industry is witnessing exponential growth, given India’s strategic location in the region. Chennai with its host of infrastructure advantages like highest internet speeds in the country, availability of submarine cable landing infrastructure, land supply, green energy options, supportive government policies and skilled manpower will emerge as the next data centre hub after Mumbai. As the industry attains infrastructure status, data centre expansion will further accelerate and with it the inherent need for sustainable measures. Sustainability will be a huge focus for the industry and our efforts to reduce carbon footprint will play a big role in India becoming a preferred data centre hub in Asia Pacific.”

The report highlights that while India’s data centre future will largely depend on coastal cities with ready access to cable landing stations, landlocked cities like Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, and Pune will also be beneficiaries of a growing data centre industry.  The Delhi NCR region’s data centre industry has been supported by regulatory incentives and has the potential for large demand from government organizations. Pune has developed as a disaster recovery location for banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) players due to its proximity to Mumbai. Bengaluru has a higher proportion of on-premises data centres operated by global in-house centres of global technology firms. Kolkata located in the densely populated eastern region of India is expected to have a new cable landing station in the next few years and will emerge as an important location.

According to the joint research, India’s digital journey is accelerating rapidly, and cloud, data centre, and telecom players are adopting various strategies to capture a share of this growing market. Nxtra by Airtel is well aligned with this journey and to invest Rs 5,000 crores by 2025 to further scale up its largest network of 11 large and 120 edge data centres, fully integrated with Airtel’s global submarine cable network and landing stations. The investment will include new data centre parks in key metro cities and will triple Nxtra by Airtel’s installed capacity to over 400 megawatts (MW). Nxtra by Airtel has commissioned three captive solar power plants to source green energy to power its datacentres and is committed to achieving 50% of its power requirements through renewable energy sources in the next 12 months.

About Airtel

Headquartered in India, Airtel is a global communications solutions provider with over 480 Mn customers in 16 countries across South Asia and Africa. The company ranks amongst the top three mobile operators globally and its networks cover over two billion people. Airtel is India’s largest integrated communications solutions provider and the second largest mobile operator in Africa. Airtel’s retail portfolio includes high speed 4G/4.5G mobile broadband, Airtel Xstream Fiber that promises speeds up to 1 Gbps with convergence across linear and on-demand entertainment, streaming services spanning music and video, digital payments and financial services. For enterprise customers, Airtel offers a gamut of solutions that includes secure connectivity, cloud and data centre services, cyber security, IoT, Ad Tech and cloud based communication. For more details visit www.airtel.com  

About Nxtra by Airtel

Nxtra by Airtel, a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel Limited, offers largest network of secure, scalable, and sustainable data centres in India to leading enterprises, hyperscalers, start-ups, SMEs and governments. Being associated with both data centre and telecom industry for more than 2 decades, we provide a platform of hyper connected state-of-the art core and edge data centres across 120+ locations. We enable businesses to accelerate their digital journey and host their applications closer to their customers than ever before. Backed by one of the world’s largest investment firm ‘Carlyle Group’ and already investing in multiple large data centre parks, we’re committed to be a long term partner to support the journeys of our customer’s to scale and create a digital future. For further information,  visit www.nxtra.in

About JLL

JLL (NYSE: JLL) is a leading professional services firm that specializes in real estate and investment management. JLL shapes the future of real estate for a better world by using the most advanced technology to create rewarding opportunities, amazing spaces, and sustainable real estate solutions for our clients, our people, and our communities. JLL is a Fortune 500 company with annual revenue of $19.4 billion, operations in over 80 countries, and a global workforce of more than 98,000 as of December 31, 2021. JLL is the brand name, and a registered trademark, of Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated. For further information, visit jll.com.

JLL is India’s premier and largest professional services firm specializing in real estate. The Firm has grown from strength to strength in India for the past two decades. JLL India has an extensive presence across 10 major cities (Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Kochi and Coimbatore) and over 130 tier-II and III markets with a cumulative strength of close to 12,000 professionals. The Firm provides investors, developers, local corporates and multinational companies with a comprehensive range of services. These include leasing, capital markets, research & advisory, transaction management, project development, facility management and property & asset management. These services cover various asset classes such as commercial, industrial, warehouse and logistics, data centres, residential, retail, hospitality, healthcare, senior living, and education. For further information, visit jll.co.in    

Nutanix To Offer Industry Leading Banking Solution Infosys Finacle On Its Platform

* Will enable banks to accelerate digital transformation with the agility, security and mobility on future-ready modern infrastructure  

Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX), a leader in hybrid multicloud computing, today announced the availability of the industry-leading Infosys Finacle Digital Banking Solution Suite on the Nutanix platform. With this offering, banks gain a solution with open architecture and the flexibility needed to adopt and scale various applications and microservices. Leading banks in India and around the world already use the Nutanix platform to drive agility and customer-focused innovation.

“Banks need an agile IT foundation that can compete with fin-techs and digital startups, and cope with the complexity of burgeoning regulatory requirements. We are proud that our technology, when coupled with digital-banking solutions from Finacle, makes this possible. Our joint banking clients in India, including RBL and NKGSB, have already been able to unlock advantages with our modern infrastructure that enables the banks to transform customer experience, improve operational efficiency, save costs and deliver new business value,” said Rajesh Krishnia, Business Head – BFSI & Enterprise, Nutanix India. 

“For true digital transformation, banks will need to develop capabilities to innovate at speed and scale. Leveraging the potential of Nutanix’ platform is an essential component of this strategic journey. Our partnership with Nutanix will give banks yet another option to leverage top-rated capabilities of the cloud-native Finacle Digital Banking Suite, while unlocking amplified agility, scalability and resilience,” said Venkataramana Gosavi, global head of Sales and Alliances, Infosys Finacle.

“Most banks we work with used to face significant technical and business challenges: contact center and branch productivity delays; downtime due to frequent upgrades and updates; complex and under-utilized legacy infrastructure; and limited automation of IT processes. When these banks decided to launch an IT transformation program with agile, always-awake and automated IT as the key drivers, the Nutanix platform was their preferred solution. Our partnership with Finacle helps provide our users significantly improved customer experience, greater straight-through processing (STP), and lower operational costs. Our solution’s services architecture also enables banks to easily scale-up to manage surges in services, on-demand, across traditional, modern and emerging channels,” added Rajesh Krishnia, Business Head – BFSI & Enterprise, Nutanix India. 

Bahwan CyberTek Expands Operations In TN; Opens Office In Coimbatore

* The Coimbatore center will offer Product Engineering, Software Delivery, and Knowledge Process Outsourcing to global customers 

Bahwan CyberTek (BCT) Group, a global provider of digital transformation solutions, opened a product engineering and software delivery center at Dr. Balasundaram Road in Coimbatore, today. 

The Coimbatore center will accommodate 70 employees and will have a training facility to promote upskilling in digital technologies. It will play a key role in building IP-led products and services to help customers across verticals in global markets. Teams here will work with solutions and products around cloud computing, data analytics, machine learning, and AI to support clients across energy, logistics, retail, and financial services verticals in addition to providing comprehensive KPO services. 

Speaking about the center, Mike Muralidharan, Chief Operating Office, Bahwan CyberTek, said, “Coimbatore has been on our radar for some time now. Its talent pool is a unique mix of students and professionals from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka, and the region is quickly catching up with major markets. During the pandemic, we saw employees migrating from major cities to regions like Coimbatore and building wholesome careers. They enjoyed the benefits of working from home, while delivering world-class services. In this age of remote working, we want to bring opportunities to where the talent is and I think this center facilitates that.  

Additionally, the government’s investment in infrastructure, Coimbatore’s appetite for growth, and its proximity to the international airport makes it the perfect destination for us,” he added. 

Karthik Sundararaman, Chief Operating Office, BCT – KPO, said, "BCT has a history of absorbing talent from this region, and we have been recruiting close to 40 candidates every year for the last eight years. This office will be an extension of our Chennai headquarters, and teams here will support global clients, engage in new product development, and help our clients realize their digital transformational goals.” 

BCT has been expanding operations in India and opened two centers of excellence in Bangalore, one in Pune and in Mumbai in the last 2 years. India continues to be a strategic priority for the business and TN, in particular, has an ecosystem of talent, educational institutions, and infrastructure that makes it an attractive destination. This is precisely why BCT, with operations in the United States, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia registered its first office in Chennai in 1999.  

Fintech Major Kiya.ai Launches Women And Girl-Child Focused Initiatives In Association With ARMMAN

~ The company also joins hands with Concern India Foundation ~

~ Provide quality education, healthcare, economic opportunities to underprivileged ~

Kiya.ai - India’s leading fintech solutions provider - is on a mission to empower women and girl children with quality education, health, and sanitation, social and economic opportunities. The company has partnered with ARMMAN and Concern India to provide healthcare facilities to women and ensure the holistic development of orphan and semi orphan girl children.

Through its existing association with ARMMAN – an NGO empowering mothers and enabling healthy children – Kiya.ai is leveraging NGO’s mHealth to create cost-effective, scalable, gender-sensitive, non-linear, and systemic solutions, and provide pregnant women and mothers better access to preventive information and services. Through its initiatives of providing accessible and affordable healthcare facilities to pregnant women and postnatal mothers, Kiya.ai already benefitted 509 women and 513 children in the last 9 months.

Owing to the success of the activity, on the occasion of International Women’s Day Kiya.ai launches the second edition of the program, an initiative that will be implemented in two phases.

Phase-I will involve the relaunch of Arogya Sakhi home-based Antenatal and Infancy Care Programme 2.0. It aims to create Arogya Sakhis – community-based women health entrepreneurs who will provide improved access to preventive, diagnostic, and monitoring services during the antenatal and infancy stages. The program aims to benefit around 1,200 women & children in the Palghar district of Maharashtra by March 2022.

Phase-II -known as mMitra, ARMMAN will provide critical information on maternal and infancy care through a free mobile app-based automated voice call service. Through this initiative, Kiya.ai aims to transform the lives of 9,300 women by March 2023, reducing maternal, perinatal, infant, and childhood mortality and morbidity cases.

Kiya.ai through its association with Concern India Foundation has facilitated the program to provide quality education to over 25 girl children and ensure physical, intellectual, and mental wellbeing through welfare services and encourage further education.

Sonali Bhave, Global HR Head at Kiya.ai, said, “Since inception, Kiya.ai has always believed in engaging and supporting initiatives in the critical areas of girl child education, women healthcare, rural development, thereby spreading a positive influence in the society. The company is continuously innovating in both the professional services it provides as well as fulfilling its social responsibility. Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, Kiya.ai and its employees virtually reached out to the less privileged with various social initiatives. We are confident that our collaboration with ARMMAN and Concern India Foundation will help us accelerate our rural outreach programs and accomplish our mission.”

Kiya.ai transforms businesses, including banks and financial institutions, via a range of advanced digital solutions and new-age technologies such as Metaverse Banking, Artificial Intelligence, Robotic Process Automation, and Big Data Analytics. The company is currently working with 500+ financial institutions across 50+ countries. With an employee strength of 1200, the Mumbai-headquartered company is also known for its CSR initiatives in rural and semi-urban India.

This year, the company aims to empower a much larger number of individuals across regions and minimise the socio-economic difficulties they face. The initiatives will be conducted physically across geographies with the participation of over 200 employees per initiative.

FarMart Acqui-Hires Subjimandi.App To Scale Its Food Supply Chain Across India

* Subjimandi.app designed a marketplace with a product-first approach, ensuring standardized trade of graded produce.

FarMart, India’s first SaaS-led B2B food supply platform, has acqui-hired fruits and vegetables (F&V) logistics platform, Subjimandi.app to optimize its logistics and expand its product portfolio by entering into the F&V categories.

FarMart’s vision is to create India’s largest food supply platform. It gives Indian farmers market access to sell high quality produce to businesses and processors in India and globally. Subjimandi.app’s shared goals and market-centric expertise will help expedite this vision.

Subjimandi.app was set up in 2020 to replace the physical marketplace and has a strong network in India across the states of Maharashtra, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh. Their approach has been to focus on the logistical challenges of a particular commodity and address them through the supply chain.

Alekh Sanghera, Co-Founder and CEO at FarMart, says, “Vivek and team are product thinkers. Subjimandi.app team have solved complex problems in F&V logistics space through their unique insights. We are excited to have them on board and work towards achieving our common mission of changing the way food is sold and purchased in India.”

V.S.Vivek, Founder and Head at Subjimandi.app, says,  “We are happy that the work we started with Subjimandi.app as a team continues at FarMart. We look forward to now doubling down and focusing on building for commodity logistics with a larger canvas and faster pace. FarMart is best positioned to build the largest food supply chain company and we are stoked to now contribute to its growth.”

ABOUT FARMART:

FarMart enables agri-retailers to serve their farmers better and provide them with market access by building an alternative food value chain that is transparent and financially rewarding for both farmers and businesses. It is building the world’s first Operating System powering food value chains to connect Indian farmers to billions across the globe.

ABB India To Shape Future Women Leaders In Technology With Lila Poonawalla Foundation; Doubles The Number Of Scholarships

•     Extends scholarships to meritorious girls from economically challenged backgrounds pursuing Engineering degrees across the cities of Bangalore, Pune, and Hyderabad

•     The program offers 200 merit-cum-need-based scholarships to these girls for pursuing education and careers in STEM

•     ­Focuses on holistic development of these potential future leaders through up-skilling interventions to make them industry-ready

ABB India in partnership with Lila Poonawalla Foundation (LPF), strengthened its ongoing merit-cum-need based undergraduate engineering scholarship program. This holistic program supports the higher education of meritorious girls from economically challenged backgrounds, providing them with an opportunity to pursue their ambitions in the field of technology. The number of scholarships has been doubled from 100 to 200 over the last 3 years. Through these scholarships, the selected girls will complete BE or B. Tech degrees in the field of their choice.

Lila Poonawalla Foundation’s holistic merit-cum-need based scholarship and skill-building program is aimed at making these students future-ready by providing varied technical and soft skills training and mentorship which complements their academic learning. Towards this, ABB India employees volunteer to impart technical sessions covering topical subjects like Cyber Security, Data analytics, industry 4.0, leadership talk, design thinking, digital marketing et cetera. So far, over 1200 hours of virtual technical training have been imparted by ABB’s Subject Matter experts over the past year. A similar mentorship program too has been kicked off to handhold the girls for their future careers.

To award scholarships to this year’s students (2021-2022), a scholarship award function was organized by Lila Poonawalla Foundation in Bengaluru in the presence of Sanjeev Sharma, Country Head and Managing Director, ABB India.

“Education and skill enhancement remain one of the main focuses of our CSR projects locally. This collaboration with Lila Poonawalla Foundation is a step towards enabling young women to become future technology leaders. This is not only a reflection of our Sustainability 2030 goals but also helps take the culture of diversity, inclusion, and equal opportunity beyond the organization. We’ve doubled the number of scholarships this year, looking at the overwhelming response; and we aim to scale this up even further going forward,” said Sanjeev Sharma, Country Head and Managing Director, ABB India.

"We are glad that we could support academically talented girls from economically challenged backgrounds in partnership with ABB. We thank ABB for supporting us throughout the last two years and extending this partnership. As a valued partner, ABB has not only financially supported these girls but also engaged holistically through the Employee Volunteering and mentoring program to enhance their employability and corporate readiness skills," said Lila Poonawalla, Chairperson, Lila Poonawalla Foundation and a Padma Shri awardee.

ABB India is making concerted efforts for more inclusive growth, both within the workplace and for the greater society, through a variety of community development activities in the fields of its operations. Globally, ABB also sponsors a scholarship programme called the Jürgen Dormann Scholarship, which aims to encourage students from underserved backgrounds to pursue careers in engineering by removing impediments that prohibit them from doing so.

ABB (ABBN: SIX Swiss Ex) is a leading global technology company that energizes the transformation of society and industry to achieve a more productive, sustainable future. By connecting software to its electrification, robotics, automation and motion portfolio, ABB pushes the boundaries of technology to drive performance to new levels. With a history of excellence stretching back more than 130 years, ABB’s success is driven by about 105,000 talented employees in over 100 countries. www.abb.com.

Lila Poonawalla Foundation is a non-profit organization Public Charitable Trust in India, established in 1995, accredited by the Credibility Alliance and headquartered in Pune with regional operations in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Wardha, Amravati and Nagpur. LPF works towards promoting ‘Girls Education and Women Empowerment’ by offering Merit-cum-Need based Scholarships and Personal & Professional Skill Building programs to carefully chosen academically bright but economically challenged girls, so that they can pursue their professional education and career of their choice. In its 26-year journey, LPF helped transform the lives of over 12,000 girls as well as their families in no small measure due to the sustained support of its partners and well-wishers. 

Sterlite Power Wins The “prestigious Aegis Graham Bell Award” For ‘Innovation In Telecom Infra’

Sterlite Power, a leading private sector power transmission infrastructure developer and solutions provider, has been recognized at the 12th edition of the Aegis Graham Bell Awards. Sterlite Power’s Convergence business unit, which leverages existing power utility infrastructure for telecommunications purposes, won in the category of “Innovation in Telecom Infra” for its game changing innovation in building edge computing Containerized Data Center (CDC).  

An edge computing Containerized Data Center (CDC) is a modular data center that is configured to accommodate a combination of telecom and other ancillary equipment. These advanced data centers are built closer to the end consumers, thereby boosting network performance, and significantly improving the overall customer experience. This solution has been deployed for Telcos, Communication Service Providers, and Internet Service Providers across Maharashtra. 

The Aegis Graham Bell Awards is initiated by the Aegis School of Business, Data Science and Cyber Security. It promotes innovations and recognizes the outstanding contributions by innovators. The prestigious award is supported by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India; Skill India (An Initiative of Ministry of Skill development and Entrepreneurship) and National Informatics Centre (office under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology).  

About Sterlite Power:  

Sterlite Power is a leading private sector power transmission infrastructure developer and solutions provider with projects covering approximately 13,700 circuit kms of transmission lines across India and Brazil. The Company has a portfolio of high-performance power conductors, extra high voltage (EHV) cables and optical ground wires (OPGW). The Company provides bespoke solutions for the upgrade, uprate and fiberization of existing transmission infrastructure projects. It was the sponsor of IndiGrid, India’s first power sector InvIT, listed on Bombay Stock Exchange Limited and National Stock Exchange of India Limited. The Company was also recognised at The Economic Times Innovation Awards 2020 and is a recipient of awards from International Project Management Association (IPMA).