Kotak Mahindra Bank Arm To Raise Up To $1 Billion For Data Centre Fund

A Kotak Mahindra Bank arm plans to raise up to $1 billion to invest in data centre business.

Kotak Alternate Assets, a division of Kotak Investment Advisors, on Friday announced the appointment of Subhamkar Das as the chief operating officer for the Kotak Data Centre Funds platform, as per an official statement.

The statement did not mention about the fundraising plans, but market sources said the private sector lender's arm is planning to raise between $500 million to $1 billion for the fund, which will be ploughed into the data centre businesses.

KIAL has raised/managed/advised in aggregate of over $6.8 billion across different asset classes, including real estate, private equity, infrastructure, special situations fund, and investment advisory, since its inception in 2005. Typically, it raises money from investors to be betted on opportunities it sees for higher returns, and usually, it puts in its own money as well.

The data centre business have attracted investments from a slew of players lately, including announcements by industrial houses like Adanis and Hiranandanis.

KIAL's managing director Srini Sriniwasan said India is at the cusp of a "data explosion" and the company expects the industry to grow from 650 MW to 2.2 GW over the next five years, which will be requiring an investment of $7 billion.

He said Kotak has always been trying to identify new investment opportunities and has invested in empowered teams to execute plans to meet investors' target expectations.

"Onboarding of Subhamkar will set the tone for Kotak Data Centre Funds platform, as he will be adding strength and depth to the future plans and objective of building scale to our platform," he added.

Das, who has an experience of over two decades and joins the fund from Nxtra Data, will be a senior member of KIAL's alternate asset management team that will help build the data centre practice at KIAL, the statement said.