Nxtra Data Ltd, a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel, announced on Tuesday that it will invest Rs 600 crore in the development of its largest data center in east India.
The company will invest Rs 600 crore to build the 25 MW data center in Bengal Silicon Valley, Kolkata and will be fully operational by 2024.
As a result of the groundbreaking ceremony, Nxtra Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer Rajesh Tapadia predicted that the center would serve the underserved markets of the east and northeast regions as well as the SAARC countries.
It will also fulfill the growing needs of enterprises and global cloud players.
According to Rajesh Tapadia, Nxtra Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer,
“Nxtra is on an expansion spree and will invest over Rs 5000 crore over the next four years to expand its capacity by 3X to over 400 MW. The company has already invested and partnered with eight organisations to source more than 180,000 MWh of renewable energy. Nxtra has the ambition to reach net zero by 2031.”
The company said “Once ready, it (the center) will be Nxtra’s first large-scale facility in east India in addition to its already existing 12 large and 120 edge facilities across India totalling 180 MW”.
The new center will further cement Nxtra’s position as the nation’s largest network of data centers, it added.
Rajesh Tapadia said that Nxtra is investing extensively in green energy and its state-of-the-art, carrier-neutral, hyper-scale Kolkata data center will run on renewable sources of energy.
Assuring support for the project, the state government claimed that several more companies have lined up large data center projects in the city.
It has earmarked 250 acres for Bengal Silicon Valley in New Town and land demand for data centers by various companies may reach 50 percent of the total, an official said.
At the event, Babul Supriyo, Minister of Information Technology and Electronics of West Bengal, was present, along with Debashis Sen, managing director of West Bengal Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation.