Bharti Airtel scouts for partners in US

Bharti Airtel has no plans to lie low after its African safari. The company is believed to be eyeing the US and Australia for partners to form a strategic alliance or a joint venture to grow its data centre business. Sources say the company plans to close these deals in the next two quarters.

"We expect the international partner to provide expertise on the technological side of the business," said a source familiar with the matter. When contacted, a Bharti spokesperson said they do not comment on market speculation.

Bharti already offers data centre services under the name of Managed Co-location Services and owns storage space in cities like Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai and Pune. In addition to externally storing data of large companies, it also provides data protection and security.

Indian data centre business is growing at 20-30 per cent and has attracted the attention of international companies. Experts say India is on the radar of the US-based pure play data centre service companies like Equinix and Rackspace. They also say there is a strong case for entry of international players.

"As the number of multinational companies investing in India grows, international service providers will also set up shop to service their clients," says Nareshchandra Singh, principal research analyst, Gartner.

According to the present regulations, international companies cannot enter Indian markets without a partner. Experts also claim that Indian companies, which are fairly new in this business, will gain expertise from international partnerships.

"Customers want the best of data centres deployed. If you look at large companies, they are going for the highest class of data centres and looking at more advanced technology," says Singh.

The enterprise business of Bharti Airtel, which also offers other services like Internet services, VPN services and domestic satellite services contributes to 21 per cent of its total revenues.

The company also contributes 20 per cent of its capital expenditure to this business. Airtel services various industry verticals like banking and financial services, IT, ITeS, manufacturing and distribution, media, education, telecommunications, government and retail.