Nidar Infrastructure Ltd., a data center provider for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing in India, and special purpose acquisition company Cartica Acquisition Corp announced late Monday they agreed to merge in a transaction valued at $2.75 billion.
Nidar hopes to become a public company following the combination.
Cartica maintains a trust account, which amounted to $25 million as of April 4. All proceeds from the combination are expected to be used by Nidar to execute its business plan and for general working capital purposes. Cartica’s IPO on Jan. 5, 2022 returned $230 million.
The merger’s completion must be cleared by the shareholders of Cartica as well as the listing approval of one of the U.S. stock exchanges.
GLC Securities was financial advisor to Nidar and Allen Overy Shearman Sterling US, SNG & Partners and Vale Law were its legal counsel.
From A&O Shearman, the team was led by Dallas partners Alain Dermarkar and Bobby Cardone supported by M&A associates Theodora Volsky, Emily Greenwood and Jake Lortz.
BitOoda Technologies was M&A adviser to Cartica and Morrison & Foerster, Khaitan & Co, Appleby (Cayman) Ltd. and Appleby (as Mauritius legal counsel) were legal counsel to Cartica. Imperial Capital and BitOoda Technologies are co-lead placement agents for additional capital raising activity in connection with the combination.
The MoFo team was led by Washington, D.C., M&A partner David Slotkin, New York M&A partner Joseph Sulzbach, San Diego M&A associate Dustin McKenzie and New York corporate associate Tyler Miller. The capital markets team was headed by Washington, D.C., partner Justin Salon with Washington, D.C., corporate associates Paul Aylward II and Olivia Van Dervort.
Nidar provides advanced information technology infrastructure and solutions on an “as-a-service” model to customers worldwide, including enterprises, governments, start-ups and small- and medium-sized enterprises and hyperscalers.
Sunil Gupta, CEO and co-founder of Nidar, said in a statement its Yotta brand designs, builds and operates Tier III and IV data centers, which offer colocation and hyperscale services and cloud and managed services.
“With our priority access to industry-leading GPUs through our partnership with the world’s leader in high-performance compute, together with the added ability to access U.S. capital markets, Yotta is poised to capture long-lasting demand from cloud infrastructure and AI,” he said.
Darshan Hiranandani, co-founder of Nidar and director of Nidar’s largest shareholder, added that combining with Cartica will enable its management team to continue to execute on its growth strategy to build on Yotta’s platform, accelerate growth and create long-term shareholder value.
Suresh Guduru, CEO of Cartica, stated its partnership with Nidar reflects its belief in the opportunity in technology infrastructure, “compute as-a-service” and India’s role in the global technology ecosystem.