Warburg Pincus invests $300m in emerging markets TMT platform
Warburg Pincus has invested $300 million in Princeton Growth Ventures (Princeton GV), a telecom, media and technology (TMT) buy-out platform that seeks to acquire assets in emerging markets.
New York-based Princeton GV, founded by former Tata Communications executives Rangu Salgame and Varoon Raghavan earlier this year, will particularly focus on assets such as data centers and digital media services. It will acquire those assets – which could be stand-alone businesses or corporate carve-outs – in markets such as India, China, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
Viraj Sawhney, a managing director at Warburg Pincus, said in a statement that there is a significant shortage of focused high-quality data center providers in Asia and Latin America, while the demand is expected to grow due to the development of cloud, mobile, and video streaming services.
“We believe telecom companies will increasingly divest non-core assets, which should lead to a number of attractive investment opportunities in data centers and the broader TMT infrastructure sector,” added Sawhney.
Part of Princeton GV’s strategy is to identify transformative opportunities where existing assets of global telecom companies are underperforming and under-invested. In addition to acquiring majority stakes in businesses, it will also partner with large telecom and media companies to help scale their technology infrastructure.
Last November, Warburg Pincus entered the data center space in China through a joint venture with US-listed Chinese internet services provider 21Vianet. The platform was seeded with four existing data center assets owned by 21Vianet and valued at more than $300 million.
Other relevant private equity activity includes Goldman Sachs and TPG Capital leading a A$406 million ($306 million) round for AirTrunk, a Singapore-based data center provider that is developing facilities in Australia and has plans to expand region-wide.
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