The demand for data centers in India has been steadily rising due to the expansion of online services and the proliferation of data-intensive technologies. According to a trade report, The data center capacity in the country is expected to double from about 870 MW in 2022 to 1,700-1,800 MW by 2025. Naturally, key investment firms globally and nationally are keen to invest in India. Ventures formed by Blackstone, Brookfield, AdaniConnex, Hiranandani, Digital Edge, and others are planning to add 3,335 MW of data center capacity in the coming years. This will require an investment of Rs 1.5 trillion. AdaniConnex has already executed a $213 million senior debt facility with participation from international banks to finance its under-construction data center portfolio of 67 MW in Noida and Chennai.
Blackstone-backed Lumina Cloud Infra plans to develop 600 MW of data center capacity, as per the company spokesperson. Lumina Cloud Infra recently started the construction of its first data center at Mahape, Navi Mumbai. Brookfield and Digital Realty’s joint venture BAM Digital Realty’s first phase, a 20 MW greenfield data center on a 100 MW campus in Chennai, is on track for launch at the end of 2023. It recently acquired 2.15 acres in Mumbai’s Chandivali to build a new data center, its second in the country. This facility will deliver 35 MW of IT load.
Hiranandani Group’s data center venture Yotta has a pipeline of six hyper-scale data center parks across the country, slated to be launched by 2025. This is in addition to their live data centers in Navi Mumbai and Greater Noida. Yotta also has planned data center parks covering cities like Chennai, Gift City (Ahmedabad), Pune, and Mumbai. Also, with the objective of building a network of smaller-scale edge data centers in tier II and tier III cities, it has identified cities such as Guwahati, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, and Coimbatore.
The government goal of a $ 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 AI with machine learning is going to drive future demand for data centers,