Global digital infrastructure firm Black Box is aiming to add $400-500 million of revenue through an inorganic route over the next four years to take its overall revenue to $2 billion by FY29, a senior official said.
Most of the growth of the company to the extent of $1.4-$1.5 billion will be achieved organically, Wholetime director Sanjeev Verma told businessline.
Black Box is betting on the growth in data centers, revenues from which are expected to account for a quarter of the total by the end of next four years. “From an industry perspective, we are looking at data centers as a hyper growth area, but that is one segment of our business. Whatever happens in a data centers, of course, eventually impacts the enterprise because it is the enterprise and the end users who are using them,” Verma said.
“What we are seeing now is a larger focus on end user experience driven by AI (artificial intelligence) and that is driving the demand for large amount of computing storage. And this requires a new infrastructure,” he added.
In FY25, a year of muted revenue, Black Box has been focused on quality of revenues. In FY26 it expects to 13-15 per cent revenue growth, EBITDA growth of 25-30 per cent and similar growth in net profit. In the 9 months of FY25 the company has recorded a net profit of ₹144 crore on revenue of ₹4422 crore.
It ended the December quarter with an orderbook of $465 million.
AI will be a big driver of digital infrastructure, said Verma, pointing out that the focus has shifted from making enterprise efficiency to making user experiences more engaging, whether is traveling or shopping. The option of AI-led services will gain momentum over the next couple of years, he said.
“The next 20 years would be about user experience, about what and how you want to consume, how you want to travel and how you want to connect. “The infrastructure to support 6 billion users or more does not exist and therefore you are seeing hyperactivity in build out of data centers, building out of new networks, including 5G networks to be able to support that. So I’m seeing for the next decade or so, hyperactivity in building out this new generation infrastructure because the user experience now would be dramatically different.”
“We feel from a Black Box standpoint, being a global digital infrastructure company, this is our aha moment,” Verma added.
Black Box’s share of revenues from India is also seen rising to 10 per cent in the next four years from 6 per cent now.
Verma said the company was acquisitive and its thesis for an acquisition was to buy a company and transform it to be accretive to shareholders. Acquisition would be made with an eye to get skills, scale up or to gain presence.