Macquarie Capital acquires majority stake in India's CloudExtel

CloudExtel positions itself as a network-as-a-service provider, offering various hosting and fibre connectivity services to telecom operators, internet service providers, data centres, enterprises, and content providers.

The company owns and operates networks covering more than 400 cities and towns. It claims revenue has grown at more than 84% for more five years with a positive EBITDA.

Macquarie framed the investment as tapping into India's shift toward 5G amidst growing mobile usage and demand for data capacity. It described CloudExtel as a provider of "cost effective futureproof networks."

CloudExtel CEO Kunal Bajaj described India as a market where mobile networks have grown 20x since 2015 and tower fiberisation stands at 33%, versus around 70% in mature markets. Enterprise and household fibre penetration is even lower.

"These gaps depict the opportunities that lie ahead for CloudExtel," Bajaj said in a statement. "Partnering with Macquarie Capital and their flexible balance sheet will help us substantially scale our infrastructure services and imbibe global best practices, ultimately leading to superior networks for telecom operators and delighted end users."

The fresh capital will be used to develop and roll out telecom infrastructure, particularly in small cells and fibre, while continuing to develop virtualised networks. Virtualised networking, a type of cloud computing, is hoped to facilitate improved performance and faster data connectivity for end-users.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Buyouts
• Technology
• Support services
• Infrastructure
• India
• Macquarie Group
• digitalization