India is an important market for NTT globally: CEO Tetsuya Shoji

NEW DELHI: On Thursday, NTT Communications launched the international data network services in India after it got a Virtual Network Operator International Long Distance (VNO-ILD) network licence. It will also invest over $160 million on the two data centres, which will become operational by April 2018. In an interview to ET's Surabhi Agarwal, CEO Tetsuya Shoji of NTT Communications talks about the reasons for expanding in the Indian market and the telecom play. Edited Excerpts:

What is your overall strategy for the Indian market?
India is an important market for NTT globally, especially for NTT Communications. India has the second largest population with half the people less than 40 years of age. The market is huge and it is growing. PM (Narendra) Modi is growing the economy and the consumer consumption is also growing. So multinationals, including Japanese ones, are expanding here to which NTT can provide ICT services and we can support them. We have the licence and we also building new data centres so we are expanding now.

The telecom market is extremely competitive in India right now. What opportunities do you see for NTT?
We looked at the quality of the communications in India and it is not necessarily good. On the request from Japanese companies, we decided to acquire this licence so that we can manage the quality well. We have this strategy called the full stack strategy which comprises everything from infrastructure, network layer, PCs and also the solutions including applications and the managed service.So we have the strategy to provide everything. It is important for us to have the licence so that we can provide the network with our management at the base line. The telecom sector being in trouble is more on the consumer side and the spectrum side, but our business is purely enterprise business and purely data. And that segment is growing very healthily.

You have announced an investment of $160 million today. What are going to be your future investments in the market?
We can't disclose our future investment plan but I can say that we have prepared to build the new data centres in Mumbai and Bengaluru. And Netmagic is structuring the demand market situation and looking at data centre demand.