Enterprise and government entities are increasingly looking beyond physical data center capacity and seeking integrated infrastructure that can support their complete digital environment. Instead of sourcing floor space, connectivity, IT integration, cybersecurity and cloud capabilities from multiple vendors, Chandrasekhara Rao Battula, Whole Time Director & Interim CEO, Invenia-STL Networks informs Rajneesh De, Group Editor, APAC Media & CXO Media in an exclusive conversation that customers are looking for a more unified approach with clear accountability.
What are Invenia-STL’s solutions and services in India?
Invenia-STL provides integrated digital infrastructure solutions across three core areas—Data center Services, Connectivity Services and Systems Integration, with our Systems Integration portfolio spanning cloud, cybersecurity and networks. Together, these capabilities enable us to support customers across the infrastructure lifecycle—from design and deployment to integration, operations and managed services.
In Data center Services, our capabilities span design and build, MEP infrastructure, telco and IT fit-outs, inside-DC connectivity and system integration. We are deepening hyperscaler engagements through large-scale, integrated data center delivery for AI-ready environments, where higher compute densities are creating new requirements around power, cooling, connectivity, and resilience.
Connectivity Services builds on our deep fibre and network heritage. We work across fibre deployment, network modernisation, enterprise connectivity, 5G and data-center connectivity, helping create the high-capacity networks that underpin India’s expanding digital ecosystem.
Our System Integration capabilities bring the digital layer together through cloud, cybersecurity and network integration, complemented by Managed Services that help customers operate, secure and modernise increasingly complex technology environments. Our differentiation lies in our ability to bring together the different layers of the digital infrastructure stack into an integrated architecture—connecting physical infrastructure, connectivity, networks, cloud and cybersecurity. This allows us to address infrastructure more holistically and create environments that are designed to scale, adapt and remain resilient as technology requirements evolve.
As AI, cloud and data-intensive workloads accelerate, our focus is on building the secure, connected and resilient digital infrastructure that will underpin India’s next phase of digital growth.
How growing demand for sovereign, compliant and energy-efficient data infrastructure is likely to shape the next phase of the country’s digital economy?
India’s digital economy is entering a phase where scale alone will not be enough. As AI adoption, cloud migration and data-intensive applications accelerate, the infrastructure supporting this growth will increasingly need to be sovereign, compliant and energy-efficient by design.
Data sovereignty is becoming particularly important as government, enterprises and regulated sectors seek greater control over where critical data resides, how it is processed and who can access it. As more data and compute capacity move onshore, however, the pressure on power infrastructure will also increase. The electricity consumption from AI-focused data centers globally is estimated to more than triple by 2030, highlighting why energy efficiency will become increasingly central to infrastructure planning.
This will influence not only how data centers are designed, but also where they are built. Access to reliable power, renewable energy, connectivity and supportive policy ecosystems will increasingly shape investment decisions. At the same time, higher-density AI workloads will require more efficient power architecture, advanced cooling and optimised PUE.
Together, these shifts will redefine the next generation of India’s digital infrastructure. The ability to scale securely and sustainably, while maintaining sovereign control and regulatory compliance, will increasingly become a strategic advantage.
How are data centers increasingly being viewed as strategic national infrastructure and the evolution of the DC industry to deliver integrated digital infrastructure services?
We are witnessing a significant shift in how data centers are viewed. Ten years ago, they were largely seen as heavily air-conditioned real estate providing space and power. Today, they are critical digital infrastructure, supporting essential services such as digital payments, aviation, healthcare, government services and enterprise operations. Any major disruption can have a cascading impact across these services, making data centers increasingly important to national and economic resilience.
This growing criticality is also changing customer expectations. Enterprise and government clients are increasingly looking beyond physical data center capacity and seeking integrated infrastructure that can support their complete digital environment. Instead of sourcing floor space, connectivity, IT integration, cybersecurity and cloud capabilities from multiple vendors, customers are looking for a more unified approach with clear accountability.
The industry is therefore moving from a traditional “space and power” model towards delivering “performance and certainty.” This means combining data center infrastructure with network connectivity, cybersecurity, cloud integration, automation and managed services to ensure reliability, security and scalability. The ability to provide these capabilities as an integrated offering will become increasingly important as organisations build infrastructure for more complex, data-intensive and AI-driven workloads.
How are power availability, cooling technologies and sustainability considered as the next frontier for data center competitiveness?
Power availability, cooling efficiency and sustainability are rapidly becoming defining factors for data center competitiveness. The rise of AI and high-density computing is significantly increasing both power consumption and heat generation, putting greater pressure on traditional approaches to power and cooling.
Globally, we are already seeing some interesting responses to this challenge. In colder regions, data centers are being located to take advantage of naturally lower ambient temperatures, reducing the energy required for cooling. Some markets are also finding ways to recover and reuse the heat generated by data centers, while access to renewable power is increasingly influencing site-selection decisions.
India will need solutions designed for its own climatic and energy realities. This will mean greater adoption of liquid and advanced cooling technologies, more efficient high-density architectures, smarter power management and greater integration of renewable energy. Site selection will also become increasingly strategic, with access to reliable power, renewable energy, water and high-quality connectivity influencing where future capacity is created.
Ultimately, competitiveness will increasingly be determined not simply by how much capacity a data center can deliver, but by how intelligently and efficiently that capacity is built and operated. The ability to manage power and heat more effectively, while reducing the overall energy and carbon footprint, will become an important differentiator as AI workloads scale.
How would you describe the use cases for some of your IT and cloud infrastructure in greenfield data centers?
A greenfield data center should be envisioned as a digital business platform, not simply as physical infrastructure. Its value lies in creating the capabilities required to deliver secure, scalable and agile IT services to end users. Key use cases include IaaS, PaaS, private and hybrid cloud, application modernisation, AI/ML and analytics, disaster recovery, backup, VDI, container platforms, DevSecOps, cybersecurity, high-performance computing and on-demand storage and compute.
From a system integrator perspective, the opportunity is to bring together multi-OEM technologies, cloud platforms, automation and managed services into one integrated operating model. This includes design, build, migration, orchestration, service management, security, observability and continuous optimisation.
Our PSU engagement is a practical example of this transformation—where a greenfield data-center environment is being converted into a managed cloud services platform, with global OEMs and the system integrator ecosystem working together. The ultimate objective is to enable the PSU to offer standardised, SLA-driven and self-service IaaS and PaaS services, while creating a scalable foundation for future digital, AI and mission-critical workloads.
What are the use cases for the DR data centers?
Disaster Recovery (DR) data centers play a critical role in ensuring business continuity by providing a secure, geographically separated environment that can replicate the critical systems, applications and data of a primary data center. The objective is to ensure that essential operations can continue even when the primary facility is affected by an unexpected disruption.
For instance, in a project with a leading Central Public Sector Enterprise (CPSE), Invenia-STL Networks is establishing a Disaster Recovery Data center (DRDC) to complement the primary site. The infrastructure can support active-active or active-passive replication, depending on the organisation’s operational and availability requirements. In an active-active setup, workloads can operate across both sites, while an active-passive model keeps the DR site on standby until a failure occurs.
In the event of a natural disaster, cyberattack, equipment failure or major power outage, critical workloads can be rapidly shifted to the DR environment, creating an additional layer of resilience. This reduces recovery time and helps organisations maintain the availability of essential services.
The focus is therefore not simply on having a backup facility, but on creating a tested and resilient infrastructure that enables rapid recovery, protects critical data and supports continuity of services with minimal downtime and data loss.
What are the key pillars of Invenia-STL’s GTM strategy?
Our go-to-market strategy is built around three priorities: deeper customer engagement, a more integrated solutions approach, and execution and delivery excellence. These priorities cut across our three core businesses—Data center Services, Connectivity Services and System Integration.
We are engaging more strategically with hyperscalers, colocation providers, telecom operators, enterprises and government customers—moving beyond individual opportunities to understand their longer-term infrastructure roadmaps and identify where we can create value across the lifecycle. This also allows us to engage earlier, shape larger opportunities and build more enduring customer relationships.
In Data center Services, our MEP capabilities provide a strong execution foundation, which we are extending into telco and IT fit-outs, inside-DC connectivity, systems integration and lifecycle services. Our connectivity heritage similarly creates opportunities across data-center connectivity, enterprise networks, fibre and network modernisation, while Systems Integration brings together cloud, cybersecurity and network capabilities. The opportunity is to bring these capabilities together around the customer rather than take them to market in silos.
As the scale and complexity of these engagements increase, execution and delivery excellence become critical differentiators. We are strengthening engineering, programme governance, partner ecosystems and delivery capabilities to improve predictability, quality and accountability across large, mission-critical infrastructure programs.
Ultimately, our GTM strategy is about engaging customers earlier, addressing a broader part of their infrastructure requirements and delivering with greater certainty. That is how we intend to deepen strategic accounts, move up the value chain and build longer-term, higher-value relationships.
The strategy is therefore not simply about growing three individual businesses, but about creating a connected portfolio that enables us to go deeper into strategic accounts, expand the scope of our engagements and build longer-term customer relationships.
How would you uniquely differentiate Invenia-STL from other digital infrastructure solution providers?
What differentiates Invenia-STL is not simply the breadth of our capabilities, but how we bring them together. Digital infrastructure today spans connectivity, data centers, cloud, cybersecurity and managed services, and increasingly, these cannot be designed or operated in isolation. Our approach is to integrate these layers so that the underlying infrastructure functions as a single, connected environment.
Our heritage in connectivity gives us a distinct advantage. Having deployed more than 1.4 lakh kilometres of optical fibre, we bring deep network expertise to every infrastructure environment we build. This becomes particularly relevant in data centers, where connectivity increasingly needs to be considered alongside power, cooling, compute and cloud from the outset.
We complement this foundation with engineering, systems integration and managed services capabilities, enabling us to take a more holistic view of the customer’s infrastructure lifecycle—from design and deployment to integration and ongoing operations.
Ultimately, our differentiation lies in integration and accountability. Rather than customers having to manage multiple partners across different layers of infrastructure, we bring these capabilities together under a more unified delivery framework—reducing complexity, improving execution certainty and creating digital infrastructure that can evolve as technology and business requirements change.
