The Abraaj Group, which invests in growth markets has sold its investment in Thailand-based Unitrio Technology Limited (Unitrio), which builds high quality data centers, to NTT Facilities.

NTT Facilities, a member of the Japanese Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT), provides a comprehensive range of engineering services for data centers, telecommunications, commercial buildings and related facilities.

Abraaj, through its first South East Asia Fund, acquired its stake in Unitrio in 2010 on top of predicated increasing demand within Thailand for high quality facilities due to rapidly growing internet penetration rates, the proliferation of mobile and other devices, increasing virtualization of IT infrastructure and the adoption of cloud computing in the public and private sectors.

While the ICT sector has developed significantly over the past two years, Abraaj said substantial growth remains with internet penetration in Thailand currently at 30%, which is substantially below penetration rates of greater than 70% in more developed markets.

It said recent floods in Thailand have also shown the need for additional back-up facilities across the country with domestic service providers seeking to expand and diversify their offerings.

Within an ASEAN context, the growth expected in Thailand is second only to Indonesia, with the amount of data center space expected to almost double and data center revenues expected to grow by over three times by 2015, according to Abraaj.  

Founded in 1980, Unitrio started as a distributor of uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems and subsequently a distributor of data center and telecommunications equipment.

Foreseeing the growth trends in data hosting and storage, the company sought to move into the data center space.

Abraaj’s investment in Unitrio helped facilitate the transformation of the company into a turnkey designer and builder of data center facilities.

Today, the company has a broad base of institutional customers within the public and private sector, across the telecommunications, banking, industrial and education sectors.

Srisant Chitvaranund, managing director of The Abraaj Group said:  “Our investment in Unitro was well timed as we capitalized on rapid growth in the domestic ICT market. We believe that NTTF, given their strategic interests in the sector, is the right partner for Unitrio going forward and will enable the company to achieve their next level of growth”.