Savills, a global real estate advisory firm, has found that the country’s data center capacity would grow at a Compounded Average Growth Rate (CAGR) of 21 percent, and to go up to as much as 3400 MW or 3.4 GW by 2030. Savills also finds that in 2025, the market is likely to see some 600 MW of capacity addition and absorption of 450 MW.
It lists factors such as “increasing adoption of cloud computing, the expansion of big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the rapid growth of e-commerce and digital transformation initiatives” as the reason for this growth. The demand was mainly fuelled by Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI), IT & ITES, and services sectors. It also found that in 2024, over 200 acres of land were acquired in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai and Bengaluru.
Shedding light on the new geographies where they have observed growth, Srihari Srinivasan, Director & Lead Data Centre Services, Savills India says, “The increasing penetration of 5G and the rise in mobile application usage are driving demand for edge data centres in Tier-II and Tier-III cities such as Bhubaneswar, Patna, Lucknow, Jaipur, Kochi, Vizag, Coimbatore, Madurai, Raipur, and Hubli.” On the subject of existing established big markets, he says that dominant Tier-I cities will continue to grow. “By 2030, we expect data centre stock to reach 3,400 MW IT across major cities.”
Earlier this year, CBRE too had come out with similar findings. The report titled 2024 India Data Center Market Update says that India’s total DC capacity had reached approximately 1,255 MW between January and September 2024, and was projected to expand further to around 1,600 MW by the end of 2024. Moreover, nearly 475 MW capacity was under construction across several cities.