Macquarie Capital Acquires Majority Stake In CloudExtel

Macquarie Capital, the corporate advisory, capital markets, and principal investment arm of Macquarie Group, has acquired a majority stake in Excel Telesonic India Private Limited (CloudExtel), a leading network as a service (NaaS) provider in India. Macquarie Capital’s flexible capital investment will enable CloudExtel to further develop and roll out its telecommunications infrastructure portfolio, particularly in small cells and fibre while continuing to push the envelope towards virtualized networks, which will facilitate improved performance and faster data connectivity for end users.

“With the rapid growth of digitalisation, better network coverage and capacity is essential to enabling people to stay connected. We are excited to leverage our global experience to support CloudExtel in expanding their telecommunications portfolio as well as enhancing the quality and effectiveness of connectivity for local communities across India,” Ivan Varughese, senior managing director and head of infrastructure and energy capital, Asia Pacific, Macquarie Capital.

Macquarie Capital is the advisory, capital markets and principal investment arm of Macquarie Group that encompasses corporate advisory, a full spectrum of capital solutions, including capital raising services from equity, debt and private capital markets and principal investments from Macquarie’s balance sheet.

“Partnering with Macquarie Capital and their flexible balance sheet will help us substantially scale our infrastructure services and imbibe global best practices, ultimately leading to superior networks for telecom operators and delighted end users,” said Kunal Bajaj, CEO and co-founder, CloudExtel.

CloudExtel is a Network as a Service (NaaS) provider offering infrastructure services such as Small Cell Hosting, FTTH, Intra-City Fibre and Virtualized Networks that provides solutions to telecom operators, internet service providers, data centers, enterprises and large content providers for addressing the challenges emerging from the hyper-growth of data consumption in India.

“CloudExtel has been built from the ground up with a view of improving the economics of telecom operators and service experience of end users. It has grown at a revenue CAGR of more than 84% for over five years with a positive EBITDA. To continue to grow at an aggressive rate, achieve the next level of scale and provide its latest offering in infrastructure sharing, a significant amount of capital would be required. We are very proud to be partnering with Macquarie Capital, an organisation with a vision, appetite and culture which is aligned with that of CloudExtel,” said Ashish Jalan, founder, CloudExtel and director, Bombay Gas Company Limited.