RCom To Commercially Develop 133-Acre IT Park In Navi Mumbai

Debt-laden Reliance Communications (RCom) is planning to commercially develop Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City (DAKC), a 133-acre registered IT park in Navi Mumbai, to create 30 million sq ft of commercial space. The Anil Ambani group company is also planning to monetise its enterprise and GCX businesses.

“RCom will also monetise its India enterprise and GCX businesses,” RCom Chairman Anil Ambani said, addressing the company’s shareholders at its 14 AGM.

RCom’s subsidiary, Global Cloud Xchange (GCX), owns the largest data centre in the country, which is located at DAKC with a 40-MW capacity. With more than 4.5 lakh sq ft of built-up area and a 6,000-rack capacity, IDC-5 is a green data centre.

GCX is also setting up a landing station for the new Eagle Subsea Network. The new subsea cable, which is being built by GCX, is expected to be lit by the third quarter of 2020.

Talking about RCom, he said the company has received approvals from all its Indian and foreign lenders for monetisation of assets and for overall debt resolution.

Further, the company is also looking at developing DAKC, the valuation of this development project, according to an HDFC Realty study, is estimated to be over Rs 25,000 crore, he added.

The development of DAKC will result in creating an area that is equivalent to 75 Nariman Points (current business headquarters of Mumbai) or 10 new Bandra-Kurla Complexes (a planned commercial complex), Ambani added.

Speaking on the telecom sector, he said the rules of mobile telephony had been rewritten in the last two years. “There were multiple headwinds facing the mobile sector, and I had predicted an oligopoly, duopoly or even a monopoly. Fortunately, for the billion telecom customers, this forecast has gone through,” he said, adding, this had an adverse impact for the operators.

The sector is saddled with a debt burden of over Rs 7.7-lakh crore, which had dealt a “virtual death blow” to the incumbent operators, while employment in the sector had halved over the last two years due to hyper-competition, which had also led to more than 20 lakh job losses, he added. – The Hindu Business Line