Strategic Investors For Sterling & Wilson Data Centre Business, Unit To Be Hived Off

Sterling and Wilson Private Limited (Sterling and Wilson/ SWPL), a Shapoorji Pallonji Group Company, and one of India’s leading engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) companies, announced that it has signed definitive agreements with a group of strategic investors to carve out its Data Centre business into a new entity.

A frontrunner amongst its peers, Sterling and Wilson was amongst the first Indian EPC companies to create a strategic business unit (SBU) for Data Centres way back in 2015. Over the last eight years, S&W has successfully delivered 24 DCs globally, totaling 63 MW of capacity. Today, the company is a specialist Data Centre EPC solutions provider for its clients both in India and globally. Being an established player across India, Africa and the Middle-East – S&W enjoys tremendous goodwill in these regions due to its track record of best-in-class quality, engineering prowess and unmatched domain expertise. Of the 24 DCs, six have been delivered in the international markets of MENA and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Commenting on this occasion, Prasanna Sarambale, CEO, Data Centre Business, Sterling and Wilson Private Limited said, “We are certain that this agreement will bolster business growth by fully leveraging our strength as a market leader and taking advantage of the unprecedented expansion happening across the Data Centre industry. This growth will benefit all stakeholders with higher project realization and improved cash flows due to substantial increase in the average ticket size of DC projects worldwide.”

  

 

Khurshed Daruvala, Chairman of SWPL said, “Sterling & Wilson has been India’s leading turnkey Data Centre EPC company for the past decade, having executed marquee projects in India and abroad. With the advent of the Cloud and, more recently, AI – the demand for world-class data centres is fast increasing. With this lies an enormous opportunity for S&W to enjoy sustainable growth in the DC business both in domestic and international markets. As a diversified business group with interest across Solar EPC, Industrial EPC, T&D, MEP, Generators and other segments, we felt that the Data Centre portfolio has tremendous potential. We, therefore, inked this agreement to strengthen our balance sheet to support our brilliant management team. The new investors on board will further strengthen our financial position. Their solid investment track record will give an impetus to our growth. I am very happy to give the team, who has been loyal to us for the past decade, an opportunity to flourish in this exciting industry.”  

 The company holds a rare distinction of delivering multiple Uptime Tier III and IV certified DC on Design and Build basis, including the Bhamashah State DC project and Telecom Egypt project. It is often invited by several clients to submit offers on an exclusive basis, given its track record of successful project delivery. Clients such as Telecom Egypt, Vodafone and Raxio have offered Sterling and Wilson repeat orders.

The company is a market leader in the Egyptian DC market having completed four Data Centres successfully. It is currently executing 5 MW in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 10 MW for a Hyperscaler in Hyderabad, India and 3 MW for a client in African countries of DR Congo and Angola. It is expecting further projects in India, Egypt, UAE, KSA, Kenya, Tanzania, and Nigeria.

The business has delivered turnkey DC projects, including Civil scope by developing in-house capabilities and forging appropriate alliances in diverse markets. Its list of unmatched offerings includes Conventional Brick & Mortar, Prefabricated Modular Solutions and Containerised Data Centres. This is further strengthened by fully integrated in-house design, execution, and testing & commissioning teams.

Recently, CTRLs, another leading Data centre firm, was awarded the Solar Trailblazer award by SaurEnergy for its work in adding renewable energy to power the business. Data centre’s are one of the most energy intensive  commercial buildings thanks to their intense redundancy requirements and  high energy usage from the IT hardware hosted inside.