NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Telecoms group Bharti Airtel said on Thursday it will invest 50 billion rupees ($673 million) in expanding its data centre business to meet customer demand in and around India. Airtel Business chief executive Ajay Chitkara said its Nxtra unit will make the investment by 2025, with plans to build a data centre economy across 80 Indian cities, adding that the move will triple its installed capacity to more than 400 MW. "There is a huge potential and huge demand (for data centres) which is expected in the next three to four years time," Chitkara told a virtual news conference. Public cloud spending in India is expected to exceed $12 billion by 2025, Naveen Mishra of research firm Gartner said. Separately, Airtel said Nxtra will increase the use of green energy for its data centres, aiming to source 50% of its power requirements from renewable sources.
