Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR), the largest global provider of cloud- and carrier-neutral data center, colocation and interconnection solutions, announced today that BAM Digital Realty – its Indian joint venture with Brookfield Infrastructure L.P. (TSX: BIP.UN; NYSE: BIP) and its institutional partners (“Brookfield Infrastructure”) – has received all requisite regulatory approvals and the parties have closed the joint venture previously announced on July 14, 2021.
The joint venture enables the expansion of PlatformDIGITAL®, Digital Realty’s global data center platform, which supports the evolving data, control and networking demands of global service providers as well as global and local enterprises. Its expansion across India is expected to enable customers to rapidly scale digital transformation by deploying critical infrastructure with a leading global data center provider at the heart of a growing connected data community in India. Data centers developed in India will leverage Digital Realty’s industry-leading energy-efficient data center design and operating procedures and highly repeatable Pervasive Data Center Architecture (PDx™) approach for the new digital workplace.
In addition, Seema Ambastha has been appointed CEO of the joint venture. Ambastha joins BAM Digital Realty from NTT Netmagic where she held the position of Senior Executive Vice President, India Sales and Solution Engineering. Prior to that, she worked for Netmagic IT Services, Rolta, VMware, Oracle and Wipro Infotech. She has a strong academic background with a PhD in Computer Science as well as rich experience across diverse IT disciplines spanning more than three decades.
“We are extremely pleased that Seema has joined BAM Digital Realty at such an exciting time in the industry,” said Mark Smith, Managing Director, APAC for Digital Realty. “She brings over 20 years of strong business leadership skills across various roles in the industry. Not only will we have a fantastic global legacy to build upon, but we have a tremendous opportunity as well. With a population of over 1.4 billion, India is the world’s fifth-largest economy in terms of GDP, with a rapidly emerging data center market and accelerating adoption of digital business models.”
To support the expected rapid growth opportunity for data centers in India, BAM Digital Realty has also recently filled multiple senior leadership positions, in the fields of Design & Construction as well as Business Development.
“With Seema’s appointment and the formal closing of the joint venture, we look forward to advancing several key strategic priorities for BAM Digital Realty and bringing together our collective capabilities to deliver a truly differentiated solution for our customers,” said Arpit Agrawal, Managing Director and Head of India & Middle East, Brookfield Infrastructure. “The joint venture expands Brookfield Infrastructure’s significant global data infrastructure portfolio, which currently includes $23 billion in assets across data transmission, distribution, and storage, including a portfolio of 139,000 operational telecom wireless towers in India, which it intends to expand to 175,000 over the near term. We are excited about what the Indian market has to offer and hope to contribute meaningfully to India’s digital ecosystem.”
Additional Resources
- Digital Realty and Brookfield Infrastructure to establish joint venture to develop and operate data centers on PlatformDIGITAL® in India
- Digital Realty and Brookfield close Ascenty joint venture in Latin America
- Explore global deployment opportunities on PlatformDIGITAL®
- Visit the Data Gravity Insights Hub to learn more about data gravity and see growth forecasts in the Data Gravity Index DGx™
- Read about our open interconnection manifesto for enabling connected data communities