RMZ Group's $35 billion plan in India: Data, AI, offices, and homes

The group has made changes to its corporate structure over the past two years, forming an executive board run by professionals and overseen by a supervisory board comprising the family. Was this done in preparation for an IPO?

RMZ Real Assets Corp is being structured to mirror a publicly listed institution, with comparable governance standards in place. We need permanence of capital, which will come from tapping capital markets. Over the years, we have built partnerships with sovereign funds, pension funds, and strategic investors that have brought us to where we are today.

As we enter the next phase of growth and scale up, it will be imperative to access public markets and bring in high-quality retail investors, mutual funds, and institutional partners. We are putting together a robust deal pipeline that ensures visibility of growth across both our annuity and free cash flow businesses over the next five to 10 years.

What is the deal pipeline, and what investments are planned for digital infrastructure and real estate businesses?

We plan to invest at least $35 billion over the next five years, split equally between real estate and digital infrastructure. On the digital side, we have partnered Colt, a subsidiary of Devonshire, the family office of Abigail Johnson, which owns Fidelity Inc. We are building new data centre capacity with them in India. Our current buildout is in Navi Mumbai and Chennai, and we have committed to adding 750 megawatt (Mw) capacity in Mumbai. In Andhra Pradesh, we will create a nearly 500 Mw colocation data centre in Visakhapatnam, along with smaller facilities in Hyderabad and Bengaluru.

We are also developing a graphics processing unit-as-a-service (GPUaaS) platform, classified as an AI factory, which will be a separate capacity vertical. We are still finalising the business plan for this.

Our target is to build 1.5 gigawatt of colocation data centre capacity over five years. At $7–10 million per Mw, this alone represents a $12–15 billion investment. AI factories will require extra capital, taking the total beyond our current commitment.

What are your plans on the real estate side?

Global capability centres (GCCs) continue to drive office demand in India. About 1,600 GCCs operate here, and new industries, particularly AI firms, are setting up centres. Our focus is to drive deal flow across office markets in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Gurugram, Mumbai, Pune, and Chennai, consistent with their absorption capacity.

We have asset-level partnerships with the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board and Mitsui Fudosan within the RMZ Office. The ownership segment is also seeing a broad base of retail and institutional buyers, which we will continue to expand. We expect about $1.5 billion in annual sales from Signature Offices.

We are also developing clusters of leisure hotels across Rajasthan and Maharashtra. Business hotels will be integrated into mixed-use developments alongside office assets in the luxury segment.

As our office portfolio expands, our hospitality and retail portfolios will scale alongside it — what we call ‘design districts’. We are also investing in logistics and will re-enter the residential market, starting with a multi-family platform in Mumbai under RMZ Living, before expanding to markets such as New Delhi and Bengaluru.

What would be the structure of an AI factory?

AI factories are a relatively new concept. They are being developed in West Asia and the US, and we are exploring opportunities to offer GPUaaS to emerging Cloud companies by building AI infrastructure within our existing colocation data centres. We may begin with a 50 Mw facility, which itself is a big investment. The lead time for operationalisation is three to six months, subject to chip availability.

Would this sit within RMZ Real Assets Corp?

No, we have set up a separate entity for this, outside RMZ Real Assets Corp.

How will the $30–35 billion investment be funded?