Rangu Salgame of PDG leads off the forum on Tuesday
Asia’s fast-expanding data centre universe comes into focus this week as Mingtiandi hosts the head of one of the region’s most active tech facility startups for an exclusive discussion of the trajectory of the market and prospects for his company, which is rumoured to be headed for a stock market listing in the coming months.
Rangu Salgame, who founded Singapore-based Princeton Digital Group in 2017, will be live on Mingtiandi’s MTD TV video platform at 10:00 AM Hong Kong time on Tuesday, 31 August for a one-on-one discussion of what his company has planned next after new facility openings in Japan and Indonesia this year, as well as the challenges facing a growing data centre player as new startups enter the market and multinational players ramp up their presence in the region.
The discussion with Salgame, which is sponsored by Yardi, is the lead-off session for Mingtiandi’s Asia Data Centre Forum 2021, which is set to span five session over the next four weeks, as leaders of some of the region’s biggest fund managers, data centre operators and professional advisors share insights on what is expected to become the world’s largest data centre market by 2025.
Building a Hyperscale Network
With backing from US fund manager Warburg Pincus, Salgame and his team at Princeton Digital have built a portfolio of 19 facilities across five countries in Asia, with a focus on creating a hyperscale facilities to serve the world’s largest Internet companies across the region.
A PDG data centre outside Jakarta
Just this past week PDG said that it has started work on a new Jakarta-area facility which will be its sixth in Indonesia, and in June the firm unveiled plans for a $1 billion hyperscale facility outside Tokyo.
Formerly a divisional CEO with India’s Tata Group, Salgame has also been active on the capital front this year including raising $230 million from China Merchants Bank in April to refinance existing debt. Then in June, Bloomberg reported that PDG was raising $400 million in cash as part of the run-up to a potential stock market listing within the coming year.
Investment Panel on the Way
The spotlight interview session with Salgame serves as the keynote for a conference which is shaping up to be the region’s most comprehensive gathering of real estate investors and data centre experts.
The conference will continue on 7 September with a panel discussion on data centre investment in Asia, featuring PDG’s chief operating officer Varoon Raghavan, as well as Jing Zhou, an experienced data centre professional who serves as a senior director with the alternatives and strategic transactions division at US investment manager Nuveen.
Providing impartial third-party advice at the 7 September session will be Bob Tan, of the data centre practice group on JLL’s capital markets team and attorney Joel H Rothstein, a shareholder with Greenberg Traurig who leads the law firm’s Asia Real Estate Practice.
Full-Stack Forum
On 9 September the forum will feature a spotlight interview with Braham Singh, chief executive of Hong Kong-based BDx Data Centres, who will share insights from his experiences leading one of the region’s top providers of co-location services, as it stretches beyond its roots in Greater China into Southeast Asia and India.
With sustainability among the biggest challenges for data centre operators and investors, a panel discussion featuring PDG executive vice president Chris Street, BDx chief operating officer Jeremy Yew, and JLL senior director Andrew Green on 14 September will be dedicated to exploring how the industry is creating greener server facilities.
On 23 September, the final session in the Asia Data Centre Forum 2021 will focus on the region’s largest market – the North Asia region. That discussion of opportunities in Greater China, Korea and Japan will feature BDx vice president and CEO for Greater China Bill Gao and Thomas Liu, a partner with Actis who has led the UK fund manager’s data centre investments in Greater China and Korea. Two more participants in the North Asia show will be named in the coming days.
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