Digital Edge, a Singapore-based data center platform company, is in advanced talks to buy a 47-acre land parcel in Thane from real estate developer Assetz Property Group for more than Rs 806 crore in order to build its first data center in India, according to the people with direct knowledge of the development.
The aforementioned land is a freehold piece of property that spans the communities of Dighe and Kalwe in Thane. In May 2021, Mukand completed the sale of 55 acres of surplus leasehold land in the same area to NTT Global Data Centers for a price of Rs 801 crore.
“The memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the land parcel has been signed and the transaction will be registered in the next few days. It also involves a large institutional financier,” said one of the persons mentioned above.
With more than $1 billion in committed money to build a market-leading pan-Asian digital infrastructure platform, Digital Edge is supported by Stonepeak, a worldwide alternative investment business that specializes in infrastructure and real assets.
The company operates in China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines in addition to providing data center and fiber services throughout Asia. The business already runs 16 data centers with a combined 210 MW of IT load capacity across these five countries.
JLL India estimates that the capacity of Indian data centers will increase by 681 MW by the end of 2024, doubling it to 1,318 MW and requiring 7.8 million square feet of real estate. Chennai will make up 25% of the new supply, trailing Mumbai with 57%
With a population of over 1.4 billion people, the fifth-largest GDP in the world, and a growing emphasis on digital service delivery, India presents a significant market opportunity to increase coverage, capacity, and connectivity options for both local and international enterprise customers as well as the top service providers in the world.
In India, a market with high growth, demand for data centers is anticipated to rise dramatically as a result of rising data consumption, economic digitization, the rollout of 5G, and tendencies toward data localization.
It is anticipated that the adoption of 5G will accelerate the expansion of OTT (over-the-top) video streaming, online gaming, augmented reality, and digital commerce.
For international investors and top developers, data centers in the region have already established themselves as one of the most alluring growth options. Investments are pouring into the data center industry as numerous new markets are emerging at once and campus sizes are expanding quickly in key locations like Mumbai and Chennai.
Major international corporations like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have already begun constructing their hyperscale data centers in India.
This demonstrates the growing preference for India among major global providers of data centers, which can be ascribed to the government’s recently announced new data center policy and the data localization standards. The new data center policy is anticipated to deliver the infrastructure and approvals required in a timely way.
Furthermore, additional factors will make India a more appealing Asia-Pacific destination for data center development, expansion, and investment in the years to come, including the new submarine cable infrastructure connecting Mumbai and Chennai to Singapore, South East Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
