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Robin Khuda was 18 years old and planning to pursue his accounting education when he moved to Australia from Bangladesh 1 / 4 of a century ago.
Today, his own balance sheet looks higher than ever. AirTrunk, an information center company Khuda founded nine years ago, was sold to Blackstone this week for A$24 billion (US$16 billion), after a bidding war that resulted in one among the most important takeovers of an Australian company.
With this acquisition, Khuda now joins a select group of Australian tech billionaires and caps the rapid rise of AirTrunk, a pan-Asian company whose value has soared as the expansion of artificial intelligence and cloud computing driven by digital infrastructure drives huge revenues.
Sydney-based asset manager Macquarie acquired an 88 percent stake in 2020, valuing the information center company at A$3 billion. Last yr it was linked to a possible A$10 billion IPO but was as a substitute put up on the market this yr as demand for data center assets from private equity and infrastructure funds continued to grow.
Khuda and other employees also sold a part of their 12 percent stake as a part of the Blackstone deal, however the 44-year-old stays chairman of the board and is predicted to retain a stake of around 5 percent.
“In lower than a decade, we’ve built the region's largest platform, with data centers in every major market that function essential digital infrastructure and support the digital economy,” he said. “For AirTrunk, that is only the start.”
The deal would also represent a “watershed moment” for the emerging Asian startup scene in Australia and lift its profile with investors, says Sandeep Varma, managing director of Saari Collective, a media company that has worked with Khuda.
After arriving in Australia, Khuda studied accounting on the University of Technology in Sydney and worked in telecommunications and cloud computing for corporations equivalent to Singtel and Fujitsu before becoming chief financial officer of Pipe Networks, an organization in search of to put a submarine fiber optic cable between Sydney and Guam.
He then became finance director of NextDC, an information centre company now valued at almost A$10 billion on the Australian Stock Exchange. Overseeing the listing brought Khuda into the investor circles, but in addition tested his willingness to work for another person relatively than go into business for himself.
Matthew Haupt of Wilson Asset Management, then a shareholder in NextDC, said it was clear Khuda had greater goals in mind. “You could see he had a desire to succeed. It almost felt like a transitional role. He had that drive,” he said. “Still, it's hard to imagine he made it there.”
In 2014, Khuda was appointed CEO of telecommunications payments company Mint Wireless, but only stayed there for six months before the struggling company's co-founder took the reins again.
This was the catalyst for Khuda to strike out on his own by founding AirTrunk. But he was unable to secure funding in Australia, so he had to make use of his private pension to cover salaries, in accordance with a former colleague. His first contracts were aggressively priced, said an individual accustomed to the corporate's early days.
Varma noted that Khuda was deeply immersed within the industry through his previous jobs. “He gained insight into the issue he was trying to unravel. He positioned himself in a way that allowed him to grow to be a rocket ship,” he said.
The former colleague said Khuda, a cricket fan who also supports the Sydney Swans soccer team, showed loyalty to his employees, generally known as “AirTrunkers”, establishing a top-floor office in Sydney's north, with impressive harbour views and free food for employees.
AirTrunk's strategy under Khuda was to look beyond Australia and construct massive data centers across Asia that would support major technology corporations like Microsoft.
Its empire of 11 so-called hyperscale data centers spans markets equivalent to Malaysia, Japan and India, where predictions of rapid growth in artificial intelligence and cloud computing have attracted corporations equivalent to Macquarie and now Blackstone.
The private equity group, which has an information center portfolio valued at $55 billion, said after the deal closed that it expects one other $1 trillion in investments in data centers outside the United States over the subsequent five years.
Khuda was one among 18 Australian business leaders who took part in a roundtable discussion with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he visits the country in 2023, outlining the importance of digital infrastructure to support the rapid digitization of Asian economies.
The vision of constructing a regional company reflects Khuda's perspective as an outsider in Australia, where the whole population of 27 million people is the scale of a serious city in Asia, said Saari Collective's Varma.
“Of course he knew he could take it even further,” he said. “He had the ambition to serve all these people and saw a method to do something that others (within the industry) weren't doing.”
Khuda marked the Blackstone take care of a post on LinkedIn, noting that he had built an organization with 350 employees and “not a single salesperson.”
He said he would work with AirTrunk's recent owners to show it into an organization with revenues in excess of A$100 billion, adding: “We have only just begun.”
