Hyderabad: Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) has committed to invest up to ₹7,000 crore (C$1 billion) in Hyderabad-based CtrlS Datacenter Ltd., as demand for cloud, hyperscale and artificial intelligence-ready datacenter capacity grows in India’s digital infrastructure sector.As part of this, CPP Investments has already bought 8.2% stake in CtrlS for ₹4,000 crore at a pre-money valuation of ₹44,914 crore or about C$6.6 billion, CtrlS and CPP Investments said on Wednesday.Additionally, CPP will invest Rs 3,000 crore in setting up a joint venture to develop hyperscale datacenter campuses across India. Sridhar Pinnapureddy, founder and chief executive of CtrlS, said the partnership with CPP Investments will help expand CtrlS’s capabilities as India enters a new phase of demand for AI-based infrastructure.“India’s AI moment is not on the horizon, it is already here. The signs of demand from hyperscalers, cloud service providers and enterprises are clear and unmistakable,” he said. Pinnapureddy told TOI that the first hyperscale data center campus to be set up by the joint venture will likely be in Navi Mumbai.He said the company has about 4.4 GW of projects in various stages of implementation, including planning, permitting and construction, and the company expects about 5 GW of capacity to go live in the next five years. “We hope to expand from 11 cities to 20-22 cities in the next two to three years,” he said.Pinnapureddy said CtrlS is building two large campuses at Chandanvalley and Future City on the outskirts of Hyderabad, with planned capacities of 1.4 GW and 2 GW respectively. The company is also ramping up its hiring with plans to grow from about 1,850 employees currently to about 3,000 people over the next four months.Max Biagosh, senior managing director and global head of real assets at CPP Investments, said India is an important part of the pension fund’s global datacenter strategy.He said, “Demand for datacenter infrastructure in India continues to accelerate due to hyperscale expansion, strong domestic cloud growth and emerging AI-led demand. This partnership with CtrlS enables us to scale up high-quality infrastructure and deliver long-term value for CPP contributors and beneficiaries.”
Canada’s CPP to invest Rs 7k crore in Hyderabad-based CtrlS & more related News Here
