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Blackstone, Brookfield among firms eyeing 3,335 MW data centre capacity
Analysts say companies need Rs 1.5 trillion for it
Written by Raghavendra KamathJuly 12, 2023 05:00 IST
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According to industry experts, about ₹1.5 trillion is required to build the data centre capacity planned by these companies. (Image: Representational)
Ventures formed by Blackstone, Brookfield, AdaniConnex, Hiranandani, Digital Edge and others are planning to add 3,335 MW of data centre capacity in the coming years. According to industry experts, about ₹1.5 trillion ($20 billion) is required to build the data centre capacity planned by these companies.
According to Crisil estimates, the data centre capacity in the country is expected to double from about 870 MW in FY22 to 1,700-1,800 MW by FY25.
AdaniConnex has already said the company is planning to build almost 1,000-megawatt data centres over 10 years. Recently, it has executed a $213 million senior debt facility with participation from international banks to finance its under-construction data centre portfolio of 67 MW in Noida and Chennai.
Blackstone-backed Lumina Cloud Infra plans to develop 600 MW data centre capacity, a company spokesperson said.
Lumina cloud Infra recently started the construction of its first data centre in the heart of Navi Mumbai in Airoli. It consists of data centre buildings that are expected to exceed 60 megawatt of critical IT load.
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The first phase of the construction is expected to be completed by 2025. Lumina is also on the path to start work on the second site at Mahape, Navi Mumbai, the spokesperson said.
“India’s data centre ecosystem is seeing robust and sustained growth, propelled by data proliferation trends. Industry capacity is expected to grow significantly in the next one-two years and Mumbai will continue to lead and account for 52% of the country’s total capacity,” the Blackstone spokesperson said .
Brookfield and Digital Realty’s joint venture BAM Digital Realty’s first phase, 20 MW greenfield data centre on a 100 MW campus in Chennai, is on track for launch at the end of 2023, a Brookfield spokesperson said.
It recently acquired 2.15 acres in Mumbai’s Chandivali to build a new data centre, its second in the country. This facility will deliver 35 MW of IT load.
“As India vies to become the world’s third largest economy by 2027, digitisation has accelerated. This has led to exponential data growth, and in turn, is driving significant demand for data centre capacity in India, which is expected to reach an installed capacity of ~1,400 MW by the end of 2025,” the Brookfield spokesperson said .
Upon completing both projects, BAM Digital Realty’s total planned capacity in India will be 135 MW, the spokesperson said.
Hiranandani Group’s data centre venture Yotta has a pipeline of six hyper-scale data centre parks across the country, slated to be launched by 2025. This is in addition to their live data centres in Navi Mumbai and Greater Noida, said Yotta CEO and MD Sunil Gupta.
“Yotta’s expansion is strategically planned to cover key regions throughout the country, in line with our objective to create a hyper-connected network of hyper-scale data centres. Our upcoming data centre parks cover cities like Chennai, Gift City (Ahmedabad), Pune and Mumbai,” Gupta said.
Along with new data centre parks, its focus remains on adding more capacity at existing data centre parks in Navi Mumbai and Greater Noida, he said.
In addition, Yotta will also build a network of smaller scale edge data centres in tier II and tier III cities. In the first phase of edge data centre development, it has identified cities such as Guwahati, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh and Coimbatore. “Overall, our aggressive investments will add around 1,300 MW of data centre capacity across India by 2030. We are also going international with a data centre park in Dhaka, Bangladesh and have identified other potential markets in Southeast Asia.” he said .
Digital Edge DC (India), a JV between Digital Edge DC, National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) and AGP DC InvestCo (AGP), has plans to build a 300 MW data centre campus in Navi Mumbai, which is expected to be one of the largest facilities in Asia when completed.
Its 47-acre plot of freehold land will facilitate a multi-phase campus and is designed to cater to hyper-scale, high-power density deployments, including build-to-suit and customised solutions. “The first phase of development is expected to be ready-for-service in late 2024,”said Samuel Lee, Digital Edge CEO.
Lee said their Navi Mumbai project is the first of what it expect to be a longer term partnership to build a pan India data centre platform. “We are exploring potential sites for future development across India’s major data centre hubs and will continue to listen to our customers to ensure we are in the metros where they need us to be,” Lee said.
Rachit Mohan, head of data centre advisory, JLL India said, the strong demand growth witnessed in the past a few years has led to global and domestic players setting up data centres in the country.
The government objective of $ 1-trillion digital economy by 2025, the rollout of 5G, increased bandwidth capacity due to new submarine cable landing, growth of internet-of-things (IoT) devices and increasing use of artificial intelligence with machine learning is going to drive future demand for data centres, Mohan said.
“India is likely to emerge as a global data centre hub, being the most cost-competitive globally,” he said.
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