Despite Tata JV exit, NTT to invest more
BULLISH ON INDIA Subsidiary of Japanese telecom giant, Netmagic, to invest around `2,000 cr in data hosting services DATA HAS THE MONEY
MUMBAI: Japanese telecom giant NTT DoCoMo may have walked out of its mobile phone joint venture with the Tatas, but that hasn’t deterred other NTT group companies from drawing up large investment plans for India.
NTT DoCoMo is currently involved in getting back `7,250 crore (about $1.1 billion) from Tata Teleservices as part of an agreement for non-performance or losses. On the other hand, NTT Communications is now finalising a $300-million (about `1,950 crore) investment plan that would see its Indian subsidiary Netmagic Solutions expand its data centre operations and build cloud facilities and also forge partnerships with Indian banks, digital payment companies and other start-ups.
Netmagic’s largest data centre spread across seven floors will open in Mumbai later this month, in which it has invested $100 million (`650 crore). The company has nine data centres spread across Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Noida. “We plan to close one small data centre in Mumbai and another smaller one in Bangalore, while investing further $200 million (`1,300 crore) to open two new faclities,” said Sharad Sanghi, MD and CEO of Netmagic Solutions.
“We are planning another data centre in Bangalore. We (`13,000 crore): Estimated Size of India’s data centre infrastructure market in 2015 “We are seeing huge growth spurred through sectors such as e-commerce ... most of the leading players are hosted with us. The other major sector is banking and finance where all this digital payments and other things give us a huge opportunity. Also lot of global cloud providers who want to set up shop in India are taking dedicated space from players like us, instead of building their own, which is a big growth area”
—SHARAD SANGHI, MD and CEO, Netmagic
are already in the process of getting approval and site selection for new one. The one after that is also likely to be in Mumbai, because the demand that we have seen here is so huge that we will have to build another,” he said.
Netmagic, which was acquired by NTT Communications in 2012, offers IT infrastructure services such as data centre hosting, cloud computing and remote infrastructure management. Some of the e-commerce companies, private sector banks and insurance firms, brokerages, corporates and top media houses are among its customers.
The company has revenue of around $100 million (`650 crore) and last year grew 50% on the back of a boom in India’s (`15,000 crore): Expected size of the data centre infrastructure market in 2018
e-commerce market and digital payments. Sanghi said that the company is already servicing many private banks and e-commerce companies and has also initiated talks with payments banks licencees.
Almost 95% of the company’s business currently comes from the private sector, but with the government’s digital initiatives, it is hopeful of getting more opportunities.
India is among the fastest growing market for NTT Communications. In terms of revenues, it is probably the fifth largest for NTT after Japan, US, Europe and Hong Kong. It is also likely to feature as a big research and development centre for NTT Communications in the future.