Reliance Industries Enters into Agreement to Invest Alongside Digital Realty and Brookfield Infrastructure to Expand Data Center Joint Venture in India

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Jul 24, 2023, 16:05 ET

'Digital Connexion: A Brookfield, Jio and Digital Realty Company' to develop critical digital infrastructure to meet rapidly-growing global and local customer demand in Indian market

AUSTIN, Texas, July 24, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR), the largest global provider of cloud- and carrier-neutral data center, colocation and interconnection solutions, announced today a planned three-way joint venture (JV) with Brookfield Infrastructure and Reliance Industries Ltd. ("RIL") to develop high-quality, highly-connected scalable data centers to meet the critical infrastructure needs of enterprises and digital services companies in India. The new JV will operate under the brand name Digital Connexion: A Brookfield, Jio and Digital Realty Company. It succeeds and builds on the strong foundation laid by BAM Digital Realty, by including RIL, India's largest private sector company, that has enabled and led India's digital transformation through Jio, as a partner. Each partner will own one-third of the joint venture. Digital Connexion expects to initially execute on the development of data center campuses on existing strategic land parcels it owns in Chennai and Mumbai.

India represents a key market opportunity for Digital Realty to extend coverage, capacity, and connectivity options to cloud providers, hyperscalers and to both local and global enterprise customers. The Indian data center market is experiencing rapid growth, driven by the growing adoption of digital technologies, cloud computing, and the surge in data consumption fueling the demand for robust and scalable data center infrastructure.

Data centers developed in India by the JV will leverage Digital Realty's industry-leading energy-efficient data center platform, design and operating procedures, highly-repeatable Pervasive Data Center Architecture (PDx®) approach and relationships with global customers, Brookfield's in-depth knowledge of the Indian infrastructure market, and Jio's massive digital and connectivity ecosystem and very strong enterprise relationships with an existing client base of 80% of large named private enterprises in India.

Jio's world class, all-IP, data strong, future proof, 4G and 5G connectivity network with deep fiber presence, covering ~99.5% of the Indian population, strategically expands the JV's connectivity to data centers and other establishments in the country. It extends the reach of PlatformDIGITAL®, Digital Realty's best-in-class global data center platform with 300+ data centers, in 50+ metros, across 27 countries and six continents, giving customers access to a dense connected data community of partners, solutions and services, including Jio's network, cloud and other service solutions in India.

"India is a mostly untapped market for the data center industry driven by the rapid adoption of digital business models, the world's largest population, and a government that recognizes the role of technology for future economic development," said Serene Nah, Managing Director and Head of Asia Pacific, Digital Realty. "This joint venture brings together three global leaders in digital infrastructure to accelerate Digital India by developing, owning and operating institutional quality carrier-and cloud neutral data centers across India."

Speaking about the transaction, Kiran Thomas, CEO, Jio Platforms Ltd. said, "We are excited to partner with Digital Realty, one of the most innovative data center companies globally and with Brookfield, our existing and trusted partner. The partnership will help us serve our enterprise and SMB clients with cutting-edge, plug-and-play solutions delivered from the cloud and lead their digital transformation and make them more competitive and efficient. The unique and highly engaging consumer and home experiences that we are offering and further innovating on, such as high-definition live content, AR / VR experiences, cloud gaming, immersive shopping experiences and cloud PC have massive compute capacity requirements. We would like to thank the Indian government for granting infrastructure status to data centers and for creating a favorable ecosystem for their development and operations, which is critical for India's vision to become a $1 trillion digital economy by 2025."

Arpit Agrawal, Managing Director, Head of Infrastructure, India & Middle East, Brookfield, added, "We are very pleased to expand our existing partnership with Reliance and add their deep expertise in the Indian telecom, tech and data landscape to the platform. Data Centers provide essential services and critical infrastructure to support the digitalization that is taking place in every aspect of life in India. Together with Reliance and Digital Realty, we look forward to providing the best of solutions to the digital transformation needs of Indian and global corporates.

Digital Connexion will have a dedicated management team in India, with leadership oversight from Digital Realty, Brookfield and RIL. With the complementary strengths of its three partners, Digital Connexion has world-class skills and resources available to enable it to support global and local customers seeking to serve the large and growing Indian market.

About Digital Connexion: A Brookfield, Jio and Digital Realty Company
Digital Connexion is a joint venture (JV) between Brookfield Infrastructure, Reliance Industries and Digital Realty. The company provides the full spectrum of highly-connected and scalable data center, colocation and interconnection solutions to meet the critical infrastructure needs of enterprises and digital services companies in India, and brings together enterprises, network service, cloud and IT providers to give customers and partners a key connectivity gateway to Europe, the Middle, East, Africa and Asia. The JV combines the complementary strengths of Jio's massive digital and connectivity ecosystem in India and tech capabilities with Brookfield Infrastructure, one of the largest owners and operators of critical global infrastructure, and Digital Realty, provider of the world's largest data center platform enabling customers with access to over 50 metros across six continents.

About Digital Realty
Digital Realty brings companies and data together by delivering the full spectrum of data center, colocation and interconnection solutions. PlatformDIGITAL®, the company's global data center platform, provides customers with a secure data "meeting place" and a proven Pervasive Datacenter Architecture (PDx®) solution methodology for powering innovation and efficiently managing Data Gravity challenges. Digital Realty gives its customers access to the connected communities that matter to them with a global data center footprint of 300+ facilities in 50+ metros across 27 countries on six continents. To learn more about Digital Realty, please visit digitalrealty.com or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

About Brookfield Infrastructure
Brookfield Infrastructure is a leading global infrastructure company that owns and operates high-quality, long-life assets in the utilities, transport, midstream and data sectors across North and South America, Asia Pacific and Europe. Brookfield Infrastructure is focused on assets that generate stable cash flows and require minimal maintenance capital expenditures. Further information is available at https://bip.brookfield.com.

Brookfield Infrastructure is the flagship listed infrastructure company of Brookfield Asset Management, a global alternative asset manager with over $825 billion of assets under management. For more information, go to https://brookfield.com.

In India, Brookfield has $24 billion in assets under management across Infrastructure, Real Estate, Renewable Power & Transition and Private Equity.

About Reliance Industries Limited
Reliance is India's largest private sector company, with a consolidated revenue of INR 976,524 crore ($118.8 billion) and net profit of INR 74,088 crore ($9.0 billion) for the year ended March 31, 2023. Reliance's activities span hydrocarbon exploration and production, petroleum refining and marketing, petrochemicals, advanced materials and composites, renewables (solar and hydrogen), retail and digital services.

Currently ranking 104th, Reliance is the largest private sector company from India to feature in Fortune's Global 500 list of "World's Largest Companies" for 2022. The company stands 45th in the Forbes Global 2000 rankings of "World's Largest Public Companies" for 2023 - top-most among Indian companies. Reliance has been ranked among the world's 20 best companies to work with, highest amongst Indian companies in Forbes' World's Best Employers for 2022. It features among LinkedIn's "Top Companies 2023: The 25 Best Workplaces To Grow Your Career In India". Website: www.ril.com

About Jio Platforms Limited
Jio Platforms Limited ("Jio"), a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited, has built a world-class, all-IP, data strong, future proof network with 4G LTE and 5G technologies (through its wholly owned subsidiary, Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited). It is the only network conceived as a Mobile Video Network from the ground up. It is future-ready and can be easily upgraded to support even more data, as technologies advance to 6G and beyond.

Jio has brought transformational changes in the Indian digital services space to enable the vision of Digital India for 1.4 billion Indians and propel India into global leadership in the digital economy. It has created an eco-system comprising of network, devices, applications and content, service experience, and affordable tariffs for everyone to live the Jio Digital Life.

For Additional Information

Investor Relations
Jordan Sadler / Jim Huseby
Digital Realty
+1 737 281 0101
[email protected]

Media Contacts
Sinhuay Ho
Digital Realty
+65 8125 8380
[email protected]

Safe Harbor Statement
This press release contains forward-looking statements which are based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially, including statements related to our joint venture with Brookfield and Reliance Jio Infocomm, the Indian market opportunity, expectations regarding the joint venture's development plans and operations in India, expectations regarding IT load capacity of the operations of the Digital Connexion joint venture, expected growth in digital transformation, sustainability programs and goals, and deployment and benefits of PlatformDIGITAL®. Our forward-looking statements are generally identified with words such as "will", "believe", "expect", "intend" and similar expressions. For a list and description of such risks and uncertainties, see the reports and other filings by the company with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

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