Ankit Goel, founder and chairman, and Radhey R. Sharma, co-founder and director, Space World Group
The Space World Group is a diversified conglomerate with a vision to empower the telecom sector by providing high-end passive digital infrastructure. In its latest venture, the group launched Constl, a unique fibre-based digital infrastructure platform. In an interview with tele.net, Ankit Goel, founder and chairman, and Radhey R. Sharma, co-founder and director, Space World Group, talk about the group’s telecom offerings, the launch of Contsl, and future growth plans…
What are the Space World Group’s key focus areas? What are your telecom product offerings?
Ankit Goel
Under Space World, we have various entities dedicated to serving the telecom sector. Within a span of five years, the company has emerged as the largest neutral in-building solution provider in the country with a 70 per cent market share.
Our clients are mobile network operators (MNOs) and regional internet service providers (ISPs).
Our latest venture is Contsl, which we started less than a year ago. At Constl, we are laying fibre across the entire country. The company’s vision is to provide the largest neutral independent point-to-point bandwidth with 100 per cent uptime. Our clients in this business would be data centres, over-the-top (OTT) players, hyperscalers, ISPs and MNOs.
How has India’s digital infrastructure transformed in recent years? How will the launch of Constl contribute to this?
Ankit Goel
We started our business when 4G was launched in India. Similarly, we have recgnised the data centre market growth. Data centres correlate directly with fibre assets and bandwidth.
Radhey Sharma
The entire communication is happening on fibre. Further, while data centres were previously limited to coastal cities such as Mumbai and Chennai, they are now emerging in other regions such as Delhi and Greater Noida. These data centres need high capacity bandwidth. Applications such as OTT also require base connectivity with fibre. These are the areas we are targeting.
How will Constl cater to the telecom and data centre industry requirements?
Ankit Goel
India has an abundance of fibre spanning more than 4 million km. As data centres increasingly demand world-class assets to ensure minimum latency and maximum uptime, we envision offering 100 per cent uptime, which no other company claims globally.
Moreover, wireline infrastructure, which is fibre, will be required to support new-age technologies such as 5G and generative artificial intelligence (AI) as they cannot rely solely on wireless. We are not limiting ourselves to laying fibre. We are also lighting up the fibre to convert it into point-to-point bandwidth. We are trying to build up our business in line with data centre growth, particularly in the top seven or eight metro cities. We are also laying our fibre in the same cities. This phase will be followed by Phase II in a couple of years, during which we will enter Tier II cities such as Lucknow and Jaipur.
Radhey Sharma
High speed connectivity is needed for applications such as video calls and OTTs. To provide such connectivity, high quality fibre assets are required in the country. This is what we are building.
How will your digital-infrastructure-as-a-service solution “KRYPTON” transform telecom networks?
Ankit Goel
In this business, we are not limiting ourselves to fibre. We are converting fibre into active fibre. We are also not limiting ourselves to bandwidth. We are converting it into a software layer. It will enhance customer experience and provide them with a plug-and-play model.
Radhey Sharma
We are bringing the whole fibre ecosystem on a software-driven platform wherein our customers can view information on inventory levels, capacity availability and requirements, etc., just with a click of buttons. We are adding AI and machine learning features to enhance our customer experience.
What are your future growth strategies and expansion plans?
Ankit Goel
Laying down fibre organically will take three to five years as it is a hardware asset. Our aspiration is to acquire some regionally available assets in the country. We are in the process of raising $300 million and we are already at an advanced stage of securing non-binding offers from various global infrastructure funds.
