Tulip Telecom, which owns the third largest data centre globally, plans to rope in an investor for its data centre and is willing to shed between 10 per cent and 25 per cent stake in the centre.
The Tulip Telecom Managing Director, Col H.S. Bedi, said that it will depend on the kind of valuation it can get for shedding the stake in the centre which is called Tulip Data City.
He said the company is open to either a financial or strategic investor to pick up the stake in the centre which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company.
Col Bedi said Tulip Telecom has invested Rs 230 crore from its own funds in the data centre while it raised a debt of Rs 250 crore from financial institutions. Another Rs 250 crore was raised through mezzanine funding which it hopes to replace with equity.
The company is also looking at options to repay $97 million of FCCB which is due in August this year. It raised $150 million through FCCB for funding the expansion of the company and has so far bought back $53 million.
Its Executive Director, Mr Deepinder Bedi, said Tulip is looking at replacing that (the remaining $97 million) with either a debt “given that it already appears as debt in our balance sheet or as equity at an appropriate time.”
Bankers appointed
“We have a fairly good holding in the organisation. Either way when you are looking at FCCBs, the bond would have got converted and led to dilution and that level of dilution we are comfortable with,” Mr Bedi said.
He said the company has also appointed bankers to look “at the best way in terms of rupee-dollar mix in order to ensure that our interest rates don't go beyond what it is today.”
Tulip has so far invested Rs 450 crore out of a total of Rs 930 crore in the 9 lakh sq ft data centre which was opened six months ago. Once the centre starts functioning fully, its hosting capacity will be as high as 12,000 racks. Some of its current clients include HP, IBM and NTT. The company hopes to generate profits from the second year onwards.