Bharti Infratel in talks to acquire Tower Vision India

Bharti Infratel, the independent tower company of the Bharti Group , is in talks to acquire Tower Vision India , a company owned by a group of international financial investors, two people familiar with the development told ET. (Economic Times)

“Tower Vision, which has about 8,500 towers with a tenancy ratio of 1.8, is expected to be valued at about Rs 4,000 crore, including debt of about Rs 1,000 crore,” said one of the people. Tower Vision has an annual turnover of about Rs 1,000 crore with an operating margin of about 25%, the person said. Bharti Infratel, the only listed tower company in India, has about 89,000 towers, including proportionate ownership of these assets in Indus Towers , a joint venture between Bharti Infratel, Vodafone India and Aditya Birla Telecom .

Earlier this week, Bharti Airtel’s wholly-owned data centre unit, Nxtra Data Ltd., signed a pact with a US firm CenturyLink to provide managed hosting, IT Infrastructure, IT services and cloud services to enterprises and government organizations in India to increase customer base. “The tie-up will not just increase our customer base but we can go back to our existing customer base and offer them a whole new level of services and product,” Neil Pollock, chief executive officer, Nxtra Data, told ET. The partnership combines Nxtra’s India data centre management expertise with CenturyLink’s hosting, managed services and cloud capabilities. The companies will be sharing revenue under the partnership for the Indian market.

“We have learnt lessons from partnering in the past and didn’t do a reseller agreement. This is absolutely a revenue sharing (model) where we both take reasonable margins that the market will tolerate,” said Pollock. Nxtra Data manages 10 data centres in Noida, Manesar, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, and Bubhaneshwar across 200,000 sq. ft. of floor space. The company has more than 200 customers in India.