Private equity-backed Bridge Data Centres is understood to be evaluating more than 10 acquisition and greenfield investment opportunities to expand cloud services across Asia Pacific.

Founded by data centre veterans Michael Foust (pictured) and Kris Kumar, in partnership with US PE firm Bain Capital, the venture yesterday said it will invest US$400m-500m in India over the next two years. It also announced advanced talks to spend a further US$220m-250m across the rest of the region.

TelecomFinance understands that after initial facilities in India, Malaysia and Singapore, it will target Australia, Indonesia, South Korea and the Philippines. Next will be Hong Kong, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand and China.

The companies were unable to comment.

Bridge Data Centres did, however, announce plans to set up a greenfield facility in Mumbai, India.

It believes the advent of global customers into India will force change in the country as demand for data centres outstrips supply. Telecoms operators in the country have been coming under pressure from constrained revenues, financial headwinds, and intensifying competition as a result of Reliance Jio’s recent entry into the market.

According to executive chairman Foust, the company will build a leadership position through market disruption.

“Currently the market is underserved and supply-constrained and does not have world-class data centre facilities and operations,” he said. 

“We plan to change this in the coming years and set the standard for data centre infrastructure in India.”

Foust was founder and CEO of San Francisco-based data centre solutions firm Digital Realty for 10 years until 2014. The company grew from a US$1bn collection of properties at its IPO in 2004 to a global platform with a US$12bn enterprise value by the time Foust left. Before that, he was founder and MD of private equity firm GI Partners.

Bridge Data Centres co-founder and CEO Kumar was SVP and regional head of Asia Pacific for Digital Realty between 2010 and 2015, according to LinkedIn. He also advised Indian telecoms giant Tata Communications on strategy between March 2015 and August 2016.

“We are targeting a mix of acquisitions and greenfield investments depending on individual market dynamics and availability of opportunities,” Kumar said.

“Our programme is predicated on assembling a portfolio of high quality facilities that meet global standards of design, construction and operations. We plan to bring a differentiated product into the country that will define reliability, efficiency and scalability.”