Gaw Capital Partners and A3 Capital have formed a new data center joint venture platform focused on Southeast Asia.
Real estate private equity firm Gaw this week announced the new JV, which will invest into ‘greenfield and under-performing data center assets’ across key markets in Southeast Asia.
The new JV has also launched Infinaxis Data Centre, a new company to develop and operate data centers in the region.
The data center assets under the JV will be managed by Infinaxis and staffed by the data center team originally under A3 Capital.
The JV platform’s first investment is located in Cyberjaya, Malaysia. The company has been seeded two greenfield plots with a combined plot area of 12,490 square meters (134,450 sq ft).
Initially, one 12MW data center will be developed on one of the plots, with the potential to be doubled in the future, with the second plot to be developed as an expansion site. A rendering of the facility on Gaw’s site called the data center ‘Project Ivory’.
Gaw said it has other pipeline opportunities in countries such as Indonesia and Singapore.
“Gaw Capital Partners is honored to work together with Infinaxis Data Centre Holdings as the platform operator. By forming this strong partnership, we will develop, acquire, or reposition four to five data centers in different locations throughout Southeast Asia,” said Kok Chye Ong, managing director and head of IDC platform, Asia (Ex-China) at Gaw Capital Partners. “The data center demand in Malaysia is underpinned by strong Internet traffic and high amount of data consumption. However, the supply of quality data centers has not caught up with the technical demand from customers. We look forward to exploring more investment opportunities in this market.”
Zahri Mirza, CEO for Infinaxis further added: “The outlook for data center demand in Southeast Asia is indeed highly positive and our collaboration with Gaw Capital will allow us to fast track the delivery of services for our customers.”
Mirza was previously at Time dotcom’s data center subsidiary AIMS DC.
Hong Kong-based Gaw has previously invested in data centers through a joint venture with Centrin in China, and has formed a company called Data Center First that is planning a 30MW data center in Batam, Indonesia. It has also announced investments and/or projects in Tokyo, South Korea, and Vietnam. It was reportedly interested in bidding for Global Switch, but didn’t make the final bidders' shortlist.
A3 is a real estate investment firm focused on data centers and industrial properties.